The Christmas Wassail

THREE

Sir George threw himself from his horse and seized ‘green tunic’ by the scruff of his neck, at the same time bellowing, ‘You great oaf! You young bully! Leave your uncle be!’ He then gave the lad a shove which sent the latter sprawling on the ground and turned to the other, who appeared to my eyes as the slightly younger man. But if he had expected sympathy, he was disappointed. ‘Get up, for Sweet Christ’s sake, Bart! What are you, a man or a jellyfish? If you can’t stand up to a lout like James, God help you! You should be ashamed of yourself!’

The man in the green tunic, referred to as James, got to his feet and gave a snort of laughter. ‘There’s one thing to be said about you, Grandfather: you don’t have favourites. We all get to feel the rough edge of your tongue.’ He stooped and proffered a hand to his opponent, still struggling to rise. ‘No hard feelings, Bartholomew. But you shouldn’t be insolent to your elders and betters, you know, even if I am your nephew.’

‘You’re not better than me. Father!’ The other youth, now on his feet, laid a hand on Sir George’s arm. ‘Tell him to stop teasing me. He’s always on at me and I don‘t like it,’ he whined.

The onlookers had fallen silent, delighted by the spectacle of an aristocratic family, oblivious of dignity and pride, tearing itself apart. But the charade was not yet played out. A female voice, shrill and full of venom, demanded, ‘What have you been doing to my son, you hulking brute?’

The knight spun round, his face as black as thunder. ‘Leave this to me, Patience! This has nothing to do with you. Just a lads’ quarrel, that’s all. Bart’s not hurt. Go home!’

Patience! This, then, was the present Lady Marvell, mother of ‘blue tunic’ and the woman Burl swore was last night’s visitor to the Green Lattis. I craned my neck in order to obtain a better view of her and was rewarded by seeing her clearly in profile as she turned her head to look at another woman who was pushing her way angrily through the crowd. I saw a thin face with a sharp, prominent nose and very black eyebrows, the latter finding an echo in her son’s slightly coarser features. Her slender frame was expensively dressed in a brown fur-trimmed velvet cloak and hood, which was definitely not the garment she had been wearing the previous evening — had it indeed been her whom Burl and I had seen.

The second woman who had joined the group was equally, if not quite as richly dressed in a cloak and hood of red wool with a trimming of marten fur framing her face. This I was unable to see because she was turned away from me, addressing Sir George, but her voice was as high-pitched as Lady Marvell’s and every bit as vituperative.

‘What is going on here?’ She stabbed a forefinger at Bartholomew Marvell. ‘What has that little bastard been doing to my son?’

The youth called James stepped forward hastily and, putting an arm about her shoulders, said something in a low voice, plainly remonstrating with her, but gently.

She put up a hand to caress his cheek, her response to his words carrying easily to where Nicholas and I were standing.

‘No, I will not be silent! If your own mother can’t be your champion, who can? You have been pushed to one side all your life for that idiot there, who she says’ — the woman rounded fiercely on Patience Marvell — ‘is your grandfather’s son but who might be anyone’s by-blow for anything we can tell. After all, he was an old man when he married her and quite probably impotent by then.’

You could have heard a pin drop. This was entertainment of a very high order; better than the mummers, who were arriving that afternoon, could offer. This would provide gossip in every home and tavern in the city for months ahead. But there was still more to come. With an ear-splitting shriek, Lady Marvell threw herself on her tormentor, clawing at her face and neck and giving voice to imprecations which no lady of breeding should even know, let alone utter.

Sir George seized his wife by the shoulders, spun her round and slapped her face with the full force of his arm behind it. At the same time he addressed a thickset, middle-aged man whom I had noticed standing quietly at the front of the crowd watching the unfolding of the little drama with, I thought, a certain cynical detachment. ‘Get your wife home this instant, Cyprian! I shall have something to say to you all once we’re there.’

With that, the knight, his face contorted with fury, mounted his horse and moved her about preparatory to riding off along Redcliffe Back to one of the tall, three-storied houses that lined the southern bank of the River Avon and which had so lately become the Marvell family home.

But he found his path blocked by the arrival of authority in the shape of Richard Manifold, followed by his two henchmen, Jack Gload and Peter Littleman.

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Richard. ‘I’ve information that there’s a breach of the peace. A couple of ruffians brawling, I was told. Where are they? Let’s be having them.’

‘Get out of my way, you dolt!’ Sir George exclaimed furiously. ‘There’s no breach of the peace. Just my son and grandson having a disagreement, that’s all. I suppose honest citizens can have a bit of a turn-up without bringing the law down around their heads.’

Richard Manifold looked startled. He had not immediately perceived that the man on horseback was Sir George and for a moment or two was unsure how to proceed. But he was not easily intimidated and, although he had a natural deference for anyone with a title, he was not prepared to overlook any misdemeanour which contravened the laws laid down in Bristol’s Great Red Book.

‘I’m sorry, Sir George,’ he said respectfully, yet firmly, ‘but fighting in the city streets is not allowed. You can see for yourself what crowds it attracts. All these fools blocking the king’s highway.’ He indicated the rest of us with a dramatic sweep of his arm. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to take the culprits into custody, although I’m sure they’ll be released on the payment of a fine. Are these the two lads here?’

James Marvell grinned at the other man. ‘Looks like we’re due for a spell in the Bridewell cells, Uncle,’ he remarked good-naturedly.

‘I won’t! I won’t!’ The younger man seemed appalled at the thought of such an indignity. ‘Mother!’ He turned imploringly towards Lady Marvell. ‘Don’t let them arrest me.’

Patience Marvell caught at her husband’s bridle. ‘George, do something! You can’t allow your son to be taken into custody like a common criminal!’

The knight wheeled his horse about with such violence that she was almost thrown to the ground.

‘I wash my hands of the pack of you,’ he snarled. ‘If my son and grandson behave like common louts, then they must take the consequences.’ He addressed Richard Manifold. ‘Tell the sheriff that I’ll be along to bail them out later. Much later!’ And with that, he rode off along the wharf without a backward glance.

Richard Manifold, plainly relieved that Sir George had seen reason and bowed to the authority of the law, and with the assistance of Jack Gload and Peter Littleman, marched his two prisoners away, having first permitted them to gather up their hats and cloaks, swords and daggers from where they had left them. Lady Marvell, her stepson and the second woman, who was presumably the stepson’s wife, were left staring uncomfortably at one another, suddenly aware of the interested crowd around them. Cyprian Marvell cleared his throat awkwardly.

‘Come, Joanna! We’d better go home and — er — face the storm.’ He offered her the support of his right arm, then held out his left to his stepmother. ‘Patience?’

But she was staring after her departed husband, her face contorted with anger.

‘I’ll never forgive George for this,’ she said. ‘Letting Bart be carted off like a criminal by that officious sergeant and those two horrid, common little men.’

Whilst treasuring up this description of Jack and Pete for use at some future date, I couldn’t help feeling a certain admiration for Cyprian Marvell. I knew nothing about the man, or his family if it came to that, apart from what I had seen during the recent unsavoury spectacle, but of them all he seemed the most reasonable. The two women had started hurling invectives at one another again concerning their respective sons — each blamed the other’s for the recent brawl — and with the greatest good humour he placed himself between them, admonishing them gently, and urged them in the direction the knight had taken.

As they disappeared from view around a slight bend in the river bank, the crowd began slowly to disperse, suddenly remembering what we were all really there for; the distribution and collection of Yule logs.

‘Well, I did enjoy that,’ said a voice in my ear as Nicholas and I descended from our perch.

It was Burl Hodge, grinning all over his round, freckled face.

‘Did you get a good look at Lady Marvell?’ I asked. ‘Do you still think she’s the same woman we saw last night?’

‘Stake my life on it,’ Burl responded cheerfully. ‘Oh, yes! It was the same woman all right.’

‘I don’t see how you can be so certain. The light was too dim.’

‘I wasn’t three parts drunk like you,’ Burl said outrageously, depriving me temporarily of speech. ‘I use my eyes.’ He nudged me. ‘Here! If you’re on the same errand as me, we’d better line up for our logs before all the best ones get taken. I don’t know about your Adela, but my Jenny’s given me strict instructions what to look for. And if she don’t get what she wants she can be a right Tartar.’

‘Oh, my Adela’s reasonable enough,’ I answered smugly, but conscious of a sharp look of surprise from Nicholas. ‘All the same, perhaps you’re right — we need to be able to pick and choose.’

I set Hercules down on the ground, handed his rope to my stepson with instructions to hang on to it tightly — there were always a number of stray cats along the wharves looking for rats — and pushed my way to the front of the crowd now forming about the dispensing official. A short time later, we were on our way home.

I congratulated myself that I had managed to grab just the right log, not too dry but not too damp either; one which, when lit the day after tomorrow, St Stephen’s Day, would slowly burn and smoulder throughout the twelve days of Christmas. Adela should be pleased, I told Nicholas. I had taken a length of rope to tie around the log so that it could be dragged behind us to Small Street, but in the event was forced to carry it, Hercules taking instant exception to my having anything on a lead apart from himself. The weight of it nearly broke my arms and I staggered indoors, letting the log drop on to the hearth in the hall with a thud that shook the painted overmantel.

My wife, daughter and son came running to investigate the crash, while the dog, anticipating trouble, escaped to the kitchen as soon as Nicholas released him. Adela, however, was so delighted with the size and condition of our Yule log that she forbore to mention the flakes of red and green paint that had been shaken loose and lay scattered on the hearthstones. And later, during dinner, when I recounted the scene at Redcliffe Wharf, she was even more forgiving, filling my plate, unasked, with a second large helping of pottage.

‘Sir George must have been mortified,’ she murmured. ‘And the two women quarrelling, as well! It’ll be the talk of Bristol for weeks.’

I nodded. ‘The only one who came out of the affair with any credit was Cyprian Marvell.’

‘Cyprian! That’s a stupid name,’ Elizabeth opined scornfully.

‘It’s a saint’s name,’ Adela reproved her.

‘Saint Cyprian,’ I added, never one to hide the light of my knowledge under a bushel, ‘was Bishop of Carthage during the third century. A scholar and an orator. As a Christian, he was beheaded on the orders of the Emperor Valerian, which makes him one of the Church’s martyrs.’

My daughter was unimpressed. It worried me sometimes — whenever I had the time to think about it — that she had inherited a little of my ambiguous attitude towards religion. Moreover, her maternal grandparents, Margaret Walker and her dead husband, Adam, had dabbled in Lollardism. My former mother-in-law had, at one time, even possessed a Lollard Bible.

Elizabeth said now, in a flat little voice, ‘Being a martyr’s silly. You might just as well pretend to agree with people and then go your own way afterwards.’

I could see by the horrified expression on Adela’s face that a storm of protest was about to burst around my daughter’s head — not to mention my own for being too lax a father in these matters — so I said quickly, ‘Who wants to see the mummers’ arrival at the castle this afternoon?’

Immediately four hands shot into the air, including that of the baby, who simply copied his foster siblings’ actions. As the other three clamoured and shouted their acquiescence, he gave us all a beaming smile, which made Elizabeth swoop to pick him up and give him a stifling cuddle, which only seemed to make him smile the more.

‘You’ll come, too?’ I asked my wife.

‘If Luke is to go, I shall have to. I wouldn’t trust him with any of you.’

She gave me a little half-smile, indicating that she knew she had, for the present, been outmanoeuvred, but also letting me understand that the subject of my daughter’s irreligious attitude had merely been postponed, not forgotten.

‘At what hour are they expected?’ she asked.

I shrugged. ‘No one knows. But if we want a good view we’d best be at the castle as soon as we can. There’s bound to be a crowd waiting to see them.’

I was right. News of the mummers’ arrival for the Christmas season had attracted not only hundreds from within the city itself, but also many from beyond its walls, from the surrounding villages and hamlets. With four children and a dog, and even arriving well before midday, I had my work cut out to force a passage across the barbican bridge and, once in the castle’s outer ward, to find a place where we could all see comfortably and without being too badly jostled by the smellier and more scrofulous riff-raff of the city streets. Adela and I shared the burden of Luke’s weight between us and Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam took it in turns to be responsible for Hercules.

While waiting, I took the opportunity to look about me, not having been inside the castle for some little time and, although I knew from general report that it had fallen into a bad state of disrepair, I was nevertheless surprised by how swiftly it had deteriorated since my previous visit. One building, a guardhouse, was practically roofless, while the chimney of yet another — the castle bakery — had tumbled to the ground, leaving merely a hole in the tiles. Loose bricks and stones lay scattered everywhere to trip up the unwary, while huge cracks were opening in the walls of various other outhouses and even in the great keep itself.

I had learned something of its history from Alderman Foster who also lived in Small Street and who, unlike many of the other residents, had never resented my family’s presence there. I knew, for instance, that the castle’s construction had been started only a year or so after the Conquest under the auspices of Geoffrey de Mowbray, the warlike Bishop of Coutances (and later, for services rendered, of Exeter). The keep, however, with its six-foot-thick walls, had been built at the instigation of Earl Robert of Gloucester, bastard half-brother of the Empress Matilda, with stone brought from his birthplace of Caen, in Normandy. Every tenth stone had been set aside for the glory of God and the building of St James’s Priory.

Two kings had lain within its walls. Stephen, fighting his cousin Matilda for the English throne, had been its prisoner for some little time after his capture at the Battle of Lincoln. And, later, the future Henry II, Matilda’s son and half-nephew of Robert of Gloucester, had spent much of his boyhood, from the ages of about nine to thirteen, there; carefree, happy years which he acknowledged in later life by the granting of Bristol’s first Great Charter, exempting its citizens from certain taxes and tolls. He had married the wealthy heiress and former Queen of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had given him what she had been unable to give Louis VII: four healthy sons. But Henry quarrelled with them all, just as he quarrelled with Thomas Becket, his Archbishop of Canterbury. He was, nevertheless, one of England’s greatest kings, the Law Giver, and I liked to think that, as he lay dying at Chinon, surrounded by his enemies, he perhaps took comfort from memories of happy, childhood days in Bristol, fishing in the Rivers Frome and Avon and riding his pony through its cobbled streets or out into the surrounding countryside as far as Clifton and the gorge …

Adela nudged me painfully in the ribs. (She has a very sharp elbow when she likes.) ‘Wake up, Roger! You’re daydreaming again. What’s more, if I hadn’t managed to catch him in time, you would have dropped Luke. And I think the mummers must be coming. I can hear people cheering out in the streets.’

‘Sorry,’ I muttered, uncomfortably aware of my failings as a father and husband. I ruffled Luke’s curls by way of an apology and was rewarded with a beaming smile and the flash of a new tooth. I did not deserve it.

The shouting and cheering was growing louder as the mummers approached the castle, but I thought the tone of their reception was rather muted. And when, finally, they rattled across the barbican bridge and into the outer ward, I realized why.

This was no King’s Troupe which had been hired for our Christmas entertainment. Typically — and indeed what one should have expected knowing the city fathers’ obsession with saving money and doing everything on the cheap — it was a company of only five, two of them more than a little advanced in years. But they had made as brave a showing as they could with what they had, coloured ribbons and evergreens decking the first cart, which obviously also served as their stage. The second, smaller cart which rumbled behind was piled with chests of clothes, from which the occasional stray sleeve or leg of hose had escaped, and with rolls of painted canvas — the backdrops to their plays.

In spite of our general disappointment, we all raised a cheer as the carts came to a standstill in our midst. The young man driving the first one clambered from the box seat on to the ‘stage’ and raised his arms for silence. He was a tall, slim youth of about nineteen, with a ruddy face, ready smile and a generally pleasing appearance. I guessed that the young woman seated beside him, obviously pregnant, was his wife.

‘Friends!’ he shouted. ‘We are not a big company, as you can see.’ We all laughed and there were some disparaging remarks from the back of the crowd, but he took no notice and continued, ‘But what we lack in numbers we make up for in quality. We are, in short, the best.’ There were more cries of derision, but all good-natured and accompanied by laughter. ‘We shall give our first performance the day after tomorrow, on Saint Stephen’s Day, and it will be the enactment of Saint George and his epic struggle with the dragon. No character will be omitted. As well as the saint and his terrible opponent, you will also see depicted the Turkish Knight, the Saracen, Old Man Winter, the Doctor’ — there were roars of approval at this mention of the Doctor — ‘and Beelzebub Himself! Friends, you are all cordially invited to as many performances as you care to attend.’ He grinned broadly, adding, ‘There will, of course, be a collection for the players at each one.’

‘I thought the city fathers were paying you!’ yelled a voice, which I recognized as Jack Nym’s, from somewhere to my left.

The young man answered drily, ‘This is Bristol, master.’ There was a delighted roar from the crowd. He went on: ‘The mayor and aldermen are giving us free lodgings in the castle.’ He cast a disparaging glance around him and nodded in the direction of the roofless guardhouse. ‘The very best, as you can see’ — another roar — ‘but we have to keep body and soul together, so all donations will be gratefully received.’

He got down from the ‘stage’ and resumed his place beside the girl preparatory to driving forward into the inner ward, where one of the castle stewards was waiting patiently for him by the gate. Before the two carts disappeared from sight, however, I took quick stock of his companions. Apart from the young woman, there was another man of perhaps some thirty summers sharing the box seat with them, and whose features bore a sufficient resemblance to the girl’s to convince me that he was probably her brother.

The second cart was driven by a much older pair; a man and woman both well over sixty, and maybe nudging seventy if I were any judge of the matter. In spite of it being December, with a cold, nipping bite to the wind, the woman’s arms were bare to the elbow and, like her face, her skin was the colour of hazelnuts. Her clothes were nondescript and shapeless, while the hands which held the horse’s reins were remarkably large for her sex and appeared extremely strong. Around her head she had tied a broad strip of faded cloth from beneath which a few strands of grey hair were escaping, and between her teeth she clenched a long piece of straw which she chewed with slow, deliberate movements of her jaws. At first glance and until I noticed her skirts, I had mistaken her for a man.

Her companion on the box seat was undoubtedly male, bald but for a fringe of almost white hair which grew nearly to his shoulders. These were rounded and suggested a once tall man who was now permanently stooped with age. His skin was as brown as the woman’s, indicating, as did hers, the wandering, outdoor life. But his most distinctive feature, which I noticed as he turned his head in my direction, was the puckered skin around his right eye, drawing the corner upwards as though, at some time, it had been seared with a red-hot brand. At least, I thought that this was his most distinctive feature until he put up his right hand to flick a strand of hair from his cheek and I saw that the first two fingers were missing.

The leading cart had by now disappeared through the gate into the castle’s inner ward and the second was preparing to follow suit when a disturbance beyond the archway and voices raised in anger caused the woman to pull on the reins and bring the horse to a standstill. People, including Adela and myself, who had begun to disperse, came to a halt, craning over our shoulders to discover the cause of the commotion.

‘Oh, no!’ groaned a voice in my ear. ‘Not him again!’

But it was indeed Sir George Marvell riding out from the inner ward, together with another man, and loudly cursing the mummers’ carts which were impeding his progress.

‘Get out of my way, you idle layabouts!’ he shouted. Then, turning to his companion, he demanded in ringing tones, ‘What’s this riff-raff doing here, Robert?’

I knew Robert Trefusis by sight, although I knew very little about him. He was a tall, very upright, grey-haired man of roughly Sir George’s own age, and I understood him to be, again like Sir George, a man of inherited wealth. He was, I believed, an alderman who, on occasions, acted as one of the sheriff’s deputies, a role I suspected he had been playing that afternoon. It was my guess that Sir George had been to the castle to pay his son’s and grandson’s fines for breaking the King’s Peace that morning.

Alderman Trefusis shrugged. ‘It’s the Christmas mummers. None of my doing, George,’ he replied with equal clarity. He glanced contemptuously at the second cart and the old pair seated on the box. ‘We were too late to hire a decent troupe and this rubbish was all we could find.’ He laughed loudly. ‘As you can see for yourself — the old, the halt and the blind. Well, semi-blind, at least. Not worth their board and food for my money.’

There was an uncomfortable murmuring amongst the crowd but, to their credit, the old couple showed no reaction of any sort. They merely stared at the two men as if they weren’t there, as if they were looking right through them. Then the woman removed the straw from her mouth in order to spit over the side of the cart and the man picked his teeth with a grubby fingernail before the horse, responding to a flick of the reins, moved forward and entered the inner ward.

The gate closed behind them and the crowd once more began to move.

‘What’ve we done to deserve that he should come and live amongst us, eh?’ demanded the same voice as before, and I turned to find Jack Nym beside me. He continued without waiting for an answer, ‘That Sir George got a lovely gert house up in Clifton what he’s abandoned. All empty it is now. Weeds growing everywhere. Wood beginning to rot. Why he don’t make it over to his son and daughter-in-law and their boy is more’n anyone can tell. But he’s one o’them controlling sort. He holds the purse strings and doles out the money.’

I grinned. ‘You’ve been talking to Burl Hodge.’

Jack frowned. ‘No, I ain’t. What d’you mean?’

‘Burl doesn’t like Sir George, either.’

‘Does anyone?’ was the explosive answer. ‘Do you?’

‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘Although I believe he’s a brave man. Fought in the French wars with great credit.’

‘Huh!’ Jack dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘I’ll tell you one who hates his very guts, and that’s his sister.’

‘Why?’ asked Adela as we struggled across the bridge, hemmed in on all sides.

Jack shook his head. ‘Too long a story an’ I’ve got a load of sea coal to deliver before today’s out. You ask Mistress Walker or one of her cronies. They’ll know.’ He began ruthlessly elbowing his way through the people ahead of us. ‘God grant you a merry Christmas,’ he called back over his shoulder.

The next moment he was lost to view.