Michael JECKS - The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

But before Stephen could consider the matter further, the calm, clear voice of the Succentor led the choir in the first song and the Canon forgot all about the incident.

Ralph’s apprentice, Elias of Iddesleigh, tore along the alleys on his way home. Mary had made him delay his return to his master’s rooms, coquettishly offering him a kiss and then insisting that he should sit with her a while before returning home.

‘Mary, I can’t! I’ve got to get back with Ralph’s bread.’

‘You don’t care for me at all,’ she pouted. ‘Won’t even spare me a few moments before rushing off to your precious master.’

‘I have to,’ he protested, seeing her sullen expression. ‘But when I am free and can call myself a craftsman in my own right…’

‘By then I may have found another,’ she said tersely and flicked her hair from her eyes with a practised jerk of her head. It had taken him an age to soothe her with promises of his infatuation and ever-lasting devotion and now he was late. Very late.

When he arrived at Ralph the Glover’s front door, Elias was surprised to find it locked against him. His master rarely locked his door. He always said, ‘If someone is so desperate that they would steal my rubbish, good luck to them – they’re welcome to it!’ All knew Ralph had few enough possessions, and the poor would be given money for food by asking, so the glover had not been burgled in all the time Elias had lived with him. That was why he frowned to find the door of the house locked. His own keys, he recalled with a sinking heart, were still by his bed. He had thrown them there after hurrying to answer the door to Peter, earlier. Walking to the shop-front, he tried the handle but that too was secured and he stood there a while, baffled.

‘Master?’ he called. There was no answer.

Ralph, he knew, was set in his ways. The glover’s day was normally as predictable as the passage of the sun through the Heavens. He would rise before dawn, drink a little watered wine, wash his face, and as the bell tolled for the opening of the Cathedral’s gates and the first service, he would make his way to it via a cookshop, returning as soon as the service was ended to break his fast properly with the loaf which Elias should by then have bought. Recently Elias had taken to returning later and later from his assignations with Mary, but his jovial and tolerant master had never minded that. He merely chuckled indulgently when Elias eventually arrived, but that didn’t mean Elias was happy to let his master down. If anything, he felt all the more guilty when he failed in his duties.

Elias had no idea anything could be seriously wrong. He was only annoyed to think that the fire which he had eventually managed to light might well have gone out by now. It made him click his tongue but there was nothing he could do. Usually he would grab his keys before he hared off to see his Mary, but not today. He had woken late when Peter knocked, and left all his keys tied together with a thong lying on the floor near his truckle bed next to his knife.

He was a slow thinker and it was some little while before he bestirred himself to consider the entrance round at the back of the house.

Gervase the Succentor glanced sidelong at the Choristers below him. He could see from here that the young devils were still at it: every so often the boys in front jerked and cast suspicious looks over their shoulders.

Little fiends! Gervase tried to extend his neck without being too conspicuous and distracting the Archbishop of Totnes at his side. Peering down and a little to his left he saw that the main perpetrator was Adam. While smiling seraphically and singing as best he could (since his voice had dropped he was a sad embarrassment on occasion) he was casually tilting his candle and letting gobbets of hot wax fall on the boys in front. Gervase was not surprised. Adam was a nasty piece of work; he was jealous of the Choristers now his own voice had failed him and he was relegated to the ranks of the Secondaries. One or two Secondaries could hope for promotion provided that they kept their heads down, worked, and demonstrated intelligence sufficient for their calling, but Adam was probably not bright enough when set against that measure, Gervase reckoned. He privately thought the boy would have to leave the Cathedral. His scholarship was not up to standard.

That thought made him look farther along the line of boys. There, up at the end nearest the Dean were Luke and Henry. Two more causes of friction.

Henry and Luke were always at logger-heads; each detested the other. They must grow out of it, and the sooner the better, because for all that Luke could draw and paint and sing so well, Henry was sharper and usually got the better of him in their exchanges. At least today Luke should be all right, Gervase thought, because the election of the boy-Bishop was due to take place – and Luke would win that.

Gervase had never paused to wonder where the tradition started. It was irrelevant: the election was an annual event, as important as Christmas itself to many of the Choristers and clergy. Each year, on twenty-first December, the Feast of St Thomas the Apostle, the Choristers would vote one of their number to become the Bishop, and for one day, on twenty-eighth December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which recalled Herod’s slaughter of the boy-children of the Jews just after Christ’s birth, the elected boy would become the city’s Bishop. For those twenty-four hours, the order of the city would be turned upon its head: the Choristers would become the Canons and the church hierarchy would be upside-down. For that one day in the year, children were permitted to behave as children. All sorts of tomfoolery was allowed.

Of course, only the best-educated and most scholarly could win the election. The boy-Bishop had to be someone bright, well-mannered and versed in the services. And Gervase would have to see to it that the Bishop knew what to do and say, but that shouldn’t be hard. Luke had an excellent memory.

The foul brats – Gervase was responsible for the discipline and teaching of the Choristers so he felt entirely justified in his choice of language – would recognise that. They must vote for Luke because he was the better of the two: the better singer, the better writer, the better scholar, the better behaved generally, and easily the better born. He came from the Soth family, which was connected to John Soth, who had been Mayor of Exeter some years ago. In every way, Luke was the right choice.

Henry was only the son of a widow woman who was little more than a peasant. He had shown some promise, certainly, when he was younger, but Gervase knew how boys who showed promise at an early stage could change later on. Boys in their early teens were like different people – or, rather, animals. The sods became argumentative – worse still, the cleverer ones learned to dispute. That was when they caught the sharp end of Gervase’s tongue or felt the lash of his rope’s end. If they wished to remain in the choir, they must learn obedience, not answer back their master.

Henry was of the latter type. Wilful for his ten years, he had an insolent manner and invariably questioned the validity of any command. More often than any other he had felt the full force of Gervase’s rope, but still he remained unruly, disputatious and a disruptive influence on his peers.

Gervase sighed as he leaned back against the small shelf of the misericorde . It was many years since he himself had been ten years old, but through living with so many youngsters he could recall his own feelings with alarming clarity: the rebellious determination to behave as he wished, the desire to kick out at an unheeding remote and aloof Authority. In his heart of hearts, Gervase had a fear that Henry might be behaving as badly as Gervase himself would have liked to, had he dared, when he was younger.