BETWIXT THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
We entered the church through the south porch under a round-arched door
carved very richly, and with a sculpture over the doorway and under the
arch, which, as far as I could see by the moonlight, figured St.
Michael and the Dragon. As I came into the rich gloom of the nave I
noticed for the first time that I had one of those white poppies in my
hand; I must have taken it out of the pot by the window as I passed out
of Will Green's house.
The nave was not very large, but it looked spacious too; it was
somewhat old, but well-built and handsome; the roof of curved wooden
rafters with great tie-beams going from wall to wall. There was no
light in it but that of the moon streaming through the windows, which
were by no means large, and were glazed with white fretwork, with here
and there a little figure in very deep rich colours. Two larger
windows near the east end of each aisle had just been made so that the
church grew lighter toward the east, and I could see all the work on
the great screen between the nave and chancel which glittered bright in
new paint and gilding: a candle glimmered in the loft above it, before
the huge rood that filled up the whole space between the loft and the
chancel arch. There was an altar at the east end of each aisle, the
one on the south side standing against the outside wall, the one on the
north against a traceried gaily-painted screen, for that aisle ran on
along the chancel. There were a few oak benches near this second
altar, seemingly just made, and well carved and moulded; otherwise the
floor of the nave, which was paved with a quaint pavement of glazed
tiles like the crocks I had seen outside as to ware, was quite clear,
and the shafts of the arches rose out of it white and beautiful under
the moon as though out of a sea, dark but with gleams struck over it.
The priest let me linger and look round, when he had crossed himself
and given me the holy water; and then I saw that the walls were figured
all over with stories, a huge St. Christopher with his black beard
looking like Will Green, being close to the porch by which we entered,
and above the chancel arch the Doom of the last Day, in which the
painter had not spared either kings or bishops, and in which a lawyer
with his blue coif was one of the chief figures in the group which the
Devil was hauling off to hell.
"Yea," said John Ball, "'tis a goodly church and fair as you may see
'twixt Canterbury and London as for its kind; and yet do I misdoubt me
where those who are dead are housed, and where those shall house them
after they are dead, who built this house for God to dwell in. God
grant they be cleansed at last; forsooth one of them who is now alive
is a foul swine and a cruel wolf. Art thou all so sure, scholar, that
all such have souls? and if it be so, was it well done of God to make
them? I speak to thee thus, for I think thou art no delator; and if
thou be, why should I heed it, since I think not to come back from this
journey."
I looked at him and, as it were, had some ado to answer him; but I said
at last, "Friend, I never saw a soul, save in the body; I cannot tell."
He crossed himself and said, "Yet do I intend that ere many days are
gone by my soul shall be in bliss among the fellowship of the saints,
and merry shall it be, even before my body rises from the dead; for
wisely I have wrought in the world, and I wot well of friends that are
long ago gone from the world, as St. Martin, and St. Francis, and St.
Thomas of Canterbury, who shall speak well of me to the heavenly
Fellowship, and I shall in no wise lose my reward."
I looked shyly at him as he spoke; his face looked sweet and calm and
happy, and I would have said no word to grieve him; and yet belike my
eyes looked wonder on him: he seemed to note it and his face grew
puzzled. "How deemest thou of these things?" said he: "why do men die
else, if it be otherwise than this?"
I smiled: "Why then do they live?" said I.
Even in the white moonlight I saw his face flush, and he cried out in a
great voice, "To do great deeds or to repent them that they ever were
born." "Yea," said I, "they live to live because the world liveth." He
stretched out his hand to me and grasped mine, but said no more; and
went on till we came to the door in the rood-screen; then he turned to
me with his hand on the ring-latch, and said, "Hast thou seen many dead
men?"
"Nay, but few," said I.
"And I a many," said he; "but come now and look on these, our friends
first and then our foes, so that ye may not look to see them while we
sit and talk of the days that are to be on the earth before the Day of
Doom cometh."
So he opened the door, and we went into the chancel; a light burned on
the high altar before the host, and looked red and strange in the
moonlight that came through the wide traceried windows unstained by the
pictures and beflowerings of the glazing; there were new stalls for the
priests and vicars where we entered, carved more abundantly and
beautifully than any of the woodwork I had yet seen, and everywhere was
rich and fair colour and delicate and dainty form. Our dead lay just
before the high altar on low biers, their faces all covered with linen
cloths, for some of them had been sore smitten and hacked in the fray.
We went up to them and John Ball took the cloth from the face of one;
he had been shot to the heart with a shaft and his face was calm and
smooth. He had been a young man fair and comely, with hair flaxen
almost to whiteness; he lay there in his clothes as he had fallen, the
hands crossed over his breast and holding a rush cross. His bow lay on
one side of him, his quiver of shafts and his sword on the other.
John Ball spake to me while he held the corner of the sheet: "What
sayest thou, scholar? feelest thou sorrow of heart when thou lookest on
this, either for the man himself, or for thyself and the time when thou
shalt be as he is?"
I said, "Nay, I feel no sorrow for this; for the man is not here: this
is an empty house, and the master has gone from it. Forsooth, this to
me is but as a waxen image of a man; nay, not even that, for if it were
an image, it would be an image of the man as he was when he was alive.
But here is no life nor semblance of life, and I am not moved by it;
nay, I am more moved by the man's clothes and war-gear--there is more
life in them than in him."
"Thou sayest sooth," said he; "but sorrowest thou not for thine own
death when thou lookest on him?"
I said, "And how can I sorrow for that which I cannot so much as think
of? Bethink thee that while I am alive I cannot think that I shall
die, or believe in death at all, although I know well that I shall
die--I can but think of myself as living in some new way."
Again he looked on me as if puzzled; then his face cleared as he said,
"Yea, forsooth, and that is what the Church meaneth by death, and even
that I look for; and that hereafter I shall see all the deeds that I
have done in the body, and what they really were, and what shall come
of them; and ever shall I be a member of the Church, and that is the
Fellowship; then, even as now."
I sighed as he spoke; then I said, "Yea, somewhat in this fashion have
most of men thought, since no man that is can conceive of not being;
and I mind me that in those stories of the old Danes, their common word
for a man dying is to say, 'He changed his life.'"
"And so deemest thou?"
I shook my head and said nothing.
"What hast thou to say hereon?" said he, "for there seemeth something
betwixt us twain as it were a wall that parteth us."
"This," said I, "that though I die and end, yet mankind yet liveth,
therefore I end not, since I am a man; and even so thou deemest, good
friend; or at the least even so thou doest, since now thou art ready to
die in grief and torment rather than be unfaithful to the Fellowship,
yea rather than fail to work thine utmost for it; whereas, as thou
thyself saidst at the cross, with a few words spoken and a little
huddling-up of the truth, with a few pennies paid, and a few masses
sung, thou mightest have had a good place on this earth and in that
heaven. And as thou doest, so now doth many a poor man unnamed and
unknown, and shall do while the world lasteth: and they that do less
than this, fail because of fear, and are ashamed of their cowardice,
and make many tales to themselves to deceive themselves, lest they
should grow too much ashamed to live. And trust me if this were not
so, the world would not live, but would die, smothered by its own
stink. Is the wall betwixt us gone, friend?"
He smiled as he looked at me, kindly, but sadly and shamefast, and
shook his head.
Then in a while he said, "Now ye have seen the images of those who were
our friends, come and see the images of those who were once our foes."
So he led the way through the side screen into the chancel aisle, and
there on the pavement lay the bodies of the foemen, their weapons taken
from them and they stripped of their armour, but not otherwise of their
clothes, and their faces mostly, but not all, covered. At the east end
of the aisle was another altar, covered with a rich cloth beautifully
figured, and on the wall over it was a deal of tabernacle work, in the
midmost niche of it an image painted and gilt of a gay knight on
horseback, cutting his own cloak in two with his sword to give a cantle
of it to a half-naked beggar. "Knowest thou any of these men?" said I.
He said, "Some I should know, could I see their faces; but let them be."
"Were they evil men?" said I.
"Yea," he said, "some two or three. But I will not tell thee of them;
let St. Martin, whose house this is, tell their story if he will. As
for the rest they were hapless fools, or else men who must earn their
bread somehow, and were driven to this bad way of earning it; God rest
their souls! I will be no tale-bearer, not even to God."
So we stood musing a little while, I gazing not on the dead men, but on
the strange pictures on the wall, which were richer and deeper coloured
than those in the nave; till at last John Ball turned to me and laid
his hand on my shoulder. I started and said, "Yea, brother; now must I
get me back to Will Green's house, as I promised to do so timely."
"Not yet, brother," said he; "I have still much to say to thee, and the
night is yet young. Go we and sit in the stalls of the vicars, and let
us ask and answer on matters concerning the fashion of this world of
menfolk, and of this land wherein we dwell; for once more I deem of
thee that thou hast seen things which I have not seen, and could not
have seen." With that word he led me back into the chancel, and we sat
down side by side in the stalls at the west end of it, facing the high
altar and the great east window. By this time the chancel was getting
dimmer as the moon wound round the heavens; but yet was there a
twilight of the moon, so that I could still see the things about me for
all the brightness of the window that faced us; and this moon twilight
would last, I knew, until the short summer night should wane, and the
twilight of the dawn begin to show us the colours of all things about
us.
So we sat, and I gathered my thoughts to hear what he would say, and I
myself was trying to think what I should ask of him; for I thought of
him as he of me, that he had seen things which I could not have seen.