Читать книгу The Magnificient Century: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 27

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England had seen armies on the march—Harold in breathless haste from victory at Stamfordbridge to death at Hastings, William leading his steel-clad Normans eastward to London, the handsomely caparisoned knights of Prince Louis going confidently to the Fair of Lincoln—but never anything to equal the curious phenomenon of mass movement which happened around July 7 and December 29 of each year, the march of the Canterbury pilgrims. The pilgrims walked to the cathedral city by three routes, from Dover, from London, and from Winchester. The latter was the one most commonly used because it led direct from the West and South of England and it drew most of the European visitors who sailed from Norman ports to Southampton. It was called the Pilgrims’ Way or sometimes the Old Road.

This road converged on Winchester, the ancient capital, and there the pilgrims were allowed hospitality free for one day and one night in any of the church establishments or at Strangers’ Hall. The road from there ran due east, a rutted and stubborn track over hills and down valleys and across unexpected fords. It followed at first the course of an ancient British road, the antiquity of which has been proven by the ingots of tin occasionally dug up from the sides where they had been hidden by tin merchants when thieves attacked them.

Sometimes an invalid would be carried in a sling between horses. Still less often the creaking of a hammock-wagon would be heard, the only form of traveling vehicle of the time, bearing some great lady or person of advanced years to the scene of the martyrdom. The hammock-wagon consisted of a seat, shaped like the rockers of a hobbyhorse, perched on springless axles, and it was such an uncomfortable way of achieving distance that the need for absolution must have been great in the case of all who adopted it. Pilgrims were expected to walk, and walk they did, in gray cowl and round hat and with staff in hand, the penny which must be left at the shrine carried on a string around the neck or clutched in one hand as an identifying mark. Thus they marched, nobleman and lady of high degree, socman and franklin and buxom dame, rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief. They marched in ever-increasing numbers as the years went on. The Jubilee of the Translation in 1420, just after the great victory at Agincourt which had left men jubilant and filled with a thirst for adventure and, moreover, possessed of French spoils to pay the cost, brought one hundred thousand people to Canterbury, most of them by the Pilgrims’ Way. Conceive of the confusion which resulted when the unorganized masses drew near their destination and the weary files converged on the gates of Canterbury.

The hardest bit was over the high escarpment of the Weald. Here the roads were chalk and so the constant pressure of feet cut ever deeper into the spongy surface until the clay banks on each side, topped by high beech and yew, seemed like drifts of snow. The dense forests of the Weald were filled, according to popular report, with wild beasts and wild men. The deep chalk pits, falling off abruptly from the edges of the road, were a constant peril. All in all it was a welcome sight when the plodding pilgrims glimpsed the green of peaceful Kentish lanes.

It was a pleasant amble downhill to Canterbury, past hamlets where every house offered accommodation, at a price, past Chilham Castle and the village of Old Wives Lees and Knockholt Green, past the grave of the giant Julaber (the natives were always ready to show the way to this sight although Julaber was as mythical as Blunderbore), and so on through Westgate into the sacred city. Canterbury, once a sleepy town which the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket had turned into a busy city with twenty-one watch towers and a cluster of churches, was still gray and austere around the curving course of the Stour. There were always pilgrims walking to Canterbury, seeking grace with penny in hand, but for the two great occasions, the anniversaries of the murder of St. Thomas and the Translation, the old city girded itself to meet the invasions and to profit thereby; and did both exceedingly well. The doors of St. Thomas Hospital, the large spittlehouse built by the Martyr himself on stone arches across the Stour, were always wide open for the needy but capable of looking after a mere fraction of the impecunious who arrived. Every householder was under orders to take the travelers in and was always glad to do so at a good, round price. For the nobility there was the priory of Christ Church, where gracious rooms overlooked the avenue of elms, Les Ormeaux, which became corrupted in time to The Omers. For common men with money in their pockets there were many inns, most particularly the Chequers of the Hope, which boasted of its Dormitory of the Hundred Beds. During the teeming anniversary days, when more than twice the population of London camped in little Canterbury, the most earnest efforts of the church authorities could not cope with the situation, and most of the pilgrims slept under hedges or in the shelter of rick-stavels; finding the company of the stars more congenial, perhaps, than the snoring occupants of a hundred beds.

The carcasses of oxen and sheep were roasted whole and offered for sale on all open pieces of land, together with pots in which soup simmered, and those who could afford such a luxury were permitted to dip a spoon. The inns had capons turning on spits and mawmennies and other stews on the fire, and mountains of loaves which the White and Brown Bakers had labored for days to produce. It was impossible, however, to feed such multitudes, and the wise pilgrims, forewarned, always had a pouch in which they carried food of some kind.

Mass was celebrated in all the churches and in the open on streets black with people as far as the eye could see. It took days for all the visitors to file through the cathedral, past the Martyrdom and the shrine, after dropping their pennies in receptacles at the entrance. The pilgrimage could not have failed to become the most lucrative business in all England.

Finally the pilgrims would visit the open booths in the neighborhood of High Street and Mercery Lane, where the greatest profits were reaped. Here tokens and pilgrim signs were on sale. Every pilgrim bought something. Those who could not afford the costly ampullas, lead bottles containing a drop of the Martyr’s blood (which flowed continuously from a well and then turned from water to blood), had to content themselves with the caput Thomae, brooches with a carved representation of the mitered head of the saint. This ended the pilgrimage and, equipped with proof that they had completed their journey, the weary walkers turned homeward, rich man, poor man, beggerman, and thief.

The road over the chalk escarpment and through Chantries Wood and up St. Catherine’s Hill seemed much longer on the homeward journey and more beset with danger. But what of that? They were full of the wonders they had seen. A life sanctified with new grace stretched ahead.