A few months afterwards, when the savour of the jest had become
somewhat stale in the nostrils of the town, it happened that old Master
Matthew, looking out of an upper chamber at the backside of the house
early one morning, spied a certain maid washing out her smocks in a
little green and private garden, and his mind was so perturbed at
the view of her pretty cheeks, fair white arms and full bosom, that
his evil old frame began to shake with desire from head to foot. He
spied upon her secretly for some days, and then, unable to contain any
longer, he went incontinently to her father (who was a poor man of the
town) and obtained the girl in marriage, offering largely for her and
buying her with money as though she had been a cow or a sheep instead
of a Christian woman.
When the news got about the town that old Master Matthew was minded
to marry a young wench, great was the talk thereof. Some asked what
an old wretch, who had enough to do with cordials and powders to
keep the flicker of life in his withered carcass, could want with a
wife. Others said that there was not heat enough in his heart to
warm his own body in bed of a winter’s night, and that he had better
be thinking of burying instead of marrying; others that he had been
better minded to patch up his old soul for the next world than to
meddle with womankind, with much more that was true of the same sort.
Even his infamous companions in sin, the Apostles (or the Apostates
as they might have been more rightly called), came and reasoned with
him against his intention, saying that a young wife would be wanton,
fickle, and wasteful, spending and squandering on rich garments for
her back and rare dainties for her belly, and wasting in a few months
what he had hardly gotten in so many years, and that she would make
his life a Hell or at least a Purgatory so as to bundle him as quickly
as might be into his grave, that she might enjoy his goods and fortune
with a lusty young husband of her own choosing after his decease. But
old men are violent and headstrong in their fancies, and Master Matthew
in his sudden heat seemed to love the wench even more than his gold and
silver, so that all their persuasions were of no effect.
On the bridal day, therefore, away he crept to Church in a shabby green
jerkin, which he had had from Nick the Piper in pawn, with a favour in
his bosom and a stick in his hand. Holy Virgin, but a pretty couple
the jolly young Margot and he made, she fresh and fair as a mead in May
when it is all be-starred with flowers, he like a figure of Old Time
on a monument. He tottered along clinging to her arm like a brat to
his mother’s gown, stumbling and coughing and wheezing and spitting as
though he would shatter his old frame to pieces. She looked straight
before her, and the tears stood in her bonny blue eyes.
So they came to the threshold of the Church, and lo, just as the
wretched old man put forth his quivering foot to touch consecrated
ground, the Lord showed full mightily that He does not sleep or
slumber, for He touched the stone whereon William had carved the
carrying hence of Master Matthew by Devils with His finger and it fell
suddenly from its place and smote the usurer on his bald and shining
skull, crushing him to the ground. When they ran to him and raised him
up, he was dead. Truly, when William carved that stone, God inspired
him more than he thought, so that his chisel carved not only symbols
but also prophecies.
When the news of this event became known in the town, folk said that
it was a judgment of God upon Master Matthew, because he had practised
the sin of usury, and they began to ask how long the remaining eleven
Apostles would be suffered to live in their wickedness. Many thought
that each in his turn would be slain in precisely the same manner, each
by his own carven stone as he went through the great West porch to
offer hypocrisy at the altar of the Most High. When men met any of them
walking abroad, they would stand and jeer at them with cunning words.
‘Nay, I know not, Master Luke,’ would Nick the Piper say, ‘but if I
were one of you fellows, who live in the corner of the Market, I would
never go into the Church unless it were by the windows.’
‘Is Master Mark alive yet?’ would ask the Fletcher. ‘I wot he had been
killed by a shrewd blow on the pate days ago.’
‘Hast thou heard?’ quoth Sim. ‘An angel sat watching all last Holy Day
on the great porch. I marvel, Master Mark, that thou and thy fellows
come not to Church. Surely thou hast been instructed and knowest what
is fit for a Christian man?’
‘Has Master Philip’s stone fallen from the Church porch yet?’ asked the
Arrowsmith. ‘Methinks it seemed perilously loosened last time I saw it.’
Robert the Carpenter, meeting three of the Apostles in the Market
Place, stopped them and roundly declared in the hearing of all that he
would build eleven good oak coffins for such as might be in need of
them as cheaply as might be, were they only bespoken at once and in
that quantity.
By reason of so many quips and dry bobs the Apostles were in a few
weeks brought to a misery and humiliation befitting their state of
sin. They scarcely dared poke their noses from their lattices into the
street but folk would begin to cry out upon them and to wonder loudly
that they were still alive. None of them dared go to Church; Master
Mark, taking his courage in both hands, set out one Holy Day, but when
he came in sight of the church porch, and caught sight of the gap in
the upper projection thereof, whence Master Matthew’s stone had fallen,
his heart failed him and he turned back, and that although many good
men standing within the porch, encouraged him to enter, calling to him
that it were better to be damned as a usurer than as a heretic. This
saying, getting passed from mouth to mouth, gave new matter to the
people, who now stood about in their idle moments under the Apostles’
houses in the corner of the Market Place, and cried to each other that
the Abbot had written a letter to the Archdeacon of the Diocese that
there were eleven men in the town, who came to none of the Divine
Services, and were esteemed either heretics or Jews, and that the
Archdeacon had sent word in reply that he would shortly come with his
clerks and purge the town of heresy as though with a raging fire, and
further inquiring whether there were any known and notorious practisers
of usury in the Borough.
At which words the eleven Apostles, who stood each one listening beside
his lattice, quaked with dread and crept away silently to the back of
the house, being too afeared to listen to any more of such talk.