John the Pupil. David Flusfeder

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СКАЧАТЬ Andrew tried to see over the heads.

      What are they after? he asked me.

      I do not know, I said.

      Money, said Brother Bernard.

      We watched the ox-men raise their staves and let a merchant pass in exchange for a coin that went into the scrip of the narrow man.

      My hand went, as if in sympathy, to the clasp of my own scrip, in which I carry the Great Work.

      It is a mockery that they use the bag of the pilgrim for profit, Brother Bernard said.

      Brother Andrew and I looked at each other in wonder, partly because of his tone of indignation and partly too because this was the longest speech that either of us had ever heard him make.

      Some of the pilgrims in the throng had moved away to stand at the side of the road so that they could beg the toll from others. Brother Bernard thrust a way through for us to stand at the front. A family had just been permitted past without any exchange of money.

      A penny for strangers, a half-penny for pilgrims. Locals do not have to pay the toll.

      This was told to us by a woman who carried a basket of fish. Have a fish, she said offering one to Brother Andrew. Because of your fairness, she said. Brother Andrew reddened, looked down to the ground. When you eat my fish you can say a prayer for me, she said.

      We have no money, I told the man with the scrip.

      He ignored me, held out his hand for a penny for the toll from the woman with the fish.

      We go as pilgrims and strangers in the world, I said.

      Then that should be a penny and a half for each of you, he said talking out of the side of his mouth. The rest of his body was still, just his eyes always in motion.

      We serve God in poverty and humility. We do not use money.

      Everyone knows how you friars live. God does not need your riches or your greed, the man said.

      The conversation seemed to gladden him, as if it gave him the opportunity to display his wit. Many gave loud assent to his words and I marvelled at and feared this godless, upside-down place where pilgrims are exacted a toll to visit a shrine and the best men of learning and devotion are seen as exemplars of vice.

      What is in your bag? the man said. Treasures, I expect.

      None that you would recognise, I said.

      We will not pay, Brother Bernard said.

      Then you will not pass, the man said.

      Brother Bernard lifted the man away from the ground as if he was shaking a fallen leaf, and coins rolled out of his scrip, and the throng at first did not know how to respond to this turn of events. But when Brother Bernard had hurled the man into one of the guards with the staves, and was already moving to the other, who hesitated, as if he could not decide whether to set upon him or flee, members of the crowd were scratching around on the ground for the fallen coins, and Brother Bernard was advancing upon the second guard, who made his decision, to flee, and we watched him run, and then Brother Bernard said, in his usual tone of plain announcement,

      We should go on.

      We went on.

      In Rule Three of our Order, the blessed Saint Francis counsels, admonishes and begs his brothers that when we travel about the world, we should not be disputatious, contend with words, or criticise others, but rather should be gentle, peaceful and unassuming, courteous and humble, speaking respectfully to all as is due. Behold, he says, I send you as a sheep in the midst of wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and as simple as doves.

      Of the three of us, only Brother Andrew’s behaviour in the matter of the toll men was without sin. The Cathedral rose above us, as we made our slow process towards it through elbows and shoulders of pilgrims, and Brother Bernard denied that he had behaved improperly.

      It was right, he said.

      When Brother Bernard takes a position he is unyielding.

      Those men were demons, he said.

      We must give greater penance, I said.

      You do as your conscience tells you and I shall do likewise, he said.

      I had not been prepared for such multitudes. Brother Andrew thrust himself for safety between me and Brother Bernard. We were the sick, we were lepers and cripples, madmen, peasants, noblemen, pilgrims, all come to visit the relics of the saint. Beggars outside, preaching monks, merchants selling badges of the shrine.

      Guard your bags, said a kindly-looking man on my left.

      I carry three bags across my shoulders. In one are the necessities for my journey. In the second is space for the treasures I am to gather along the way, and the package my Master gave me that is only to be opened when we meet despair. The third bag is the scrip in which I carry my Master’s Great Work. Alerted by the kindly man’s warning, my hand went immediately to the third bag. I felt no stranger’s hand, the seal was untouched.

      There are cutpurses everywhere, the kindly man said.

      He was not a monk, and nor was he a nobleman, because his costume was ragged and worn. He looked like someone who worked on the land, but a labourer on the land would not have spoken in Latin. His tunic was extraordinary: on the worn thread were pinned dozens of lead badges in the shape of saints and stars.

      Even here?

      Especially here. You have not been to Canterbury before?

      We have been to nowhere before.

      They call me Simeon the Palmer.

      I am John the Pupil. My companions are Brother Bernard and Brother Andrew.

      You are making penance?

      This was the first encounter I had had on my journey in which I felt greeted with tenderness. There was something about Simeon the Palmer, his wise eyes, the steadiness of his hand on my arm, his odour of violets, that made me yearn to tell him about my childhood and my father’s goats and life in the friary and my loneliness and my learning, and my mission and my Master, so that he should know to love him as much as I do.

      We are making pilgrimage.

      As am I. I go to Rome and then Compostela and on to the Holy Land.

      You must carry a heavy burden of sins.

      Most of them are not my own.

      As we processed to the Cathedral gate, Simeon the Palmer explained to me that his occupation is to make pilgrimage on behalf of men who have a weight of sins, the desire to expiate them, and the money to pay someone else to do so on their behalf.

      You make the pilgrimage and you perform the penance and your hirer stays at home and the consequence is that he is shrived?

      That is how it works.

      The world СКАЧАТЬ