How Peter heard the Cock crow

I

IT was pitch dark in Deptford Creek, neither moon nor star. Uneasily walking by the waterside on the squelching mud flats, or on the landing-stage among tuns and chests and beams and piles of stone ballast, you might just make out the mast and round hull of the cog Rose Mary, as she swung slowly at her moorings. On the one side, the broad flood of the Thames shone dully like molten lead or thick oil; on the other, one or two lights glimmered faintly from Deptford town. There was a smell of tar and bilge-water and stale beer.

Beneath the light of the lantern, which burned dimly on the poop of the Rose Mary, lay Peter the Shipman comfortably on a coil of rope. By his side was a stoup of the strongest French wine he had been able to find in the cog’s hold. He had reason to be merry that night, so he trolled jolly choruses to himself between his long draughts. The Rose Mary had sailed from Bordeaux with the tide on the night of the last Wednesday, and here she was, gotten into Deptford Creek safe and sound by the Friday midnight. Never had he made such an easy and speedy passage. Besides, in his purse he bore certain pieces of silver, which he had gotten from the chapman of the Bordeaux ward at easy purchase, together with a rose noble, which he had picked from the purse of a young squire, who had taken passage with him to England. Peter chuckled. He thought to himself, ‘To-morrow early shall I leave these knaves, Thomas and Ralph, to unlade, and will I forth to the Golden Cock in Deptford to my leman Kate, to be jolly and to play me with her all the day, and I shall have great plenty of silver to buy me as much good ale as I want (curse this feeble French wine!), and as many delicate cakes and puddings and pies and ripe Kentish cherries as I can get into my belly. And the day after that shall I to Newington with that knave Ralph, to his wench’s by the Green, and stay there till all my money is spent, and then, heigho, for my pretty little Bette at Bordeaux. Beshrew my heart, how I love the girl, now I’ve left her a day or two.’

Then he burst out into a sailor’s catch.

At the sound of his voice a woman came out of the darkness and stood at the edge of the landing-stage in the faint light cast by the ship’s lantern. She was clad in many-coloured and tawdry garments, and from his place on the poop Peter could discern the chalk and rouge plastered on her cheeks and the bright vermilion on her lips; he knew her for a wench of the town. She peered into the cog.

‘What, pretty Peter,’ she cried to him, ‘art home again, good fellow? Thou ’rt welcome, by my troth. Come now and sup with me at the Pair of Oars. There is pretty company there, I warrant thee, Lilias Lightbody, Martha Kittlelegs, and Cicely Shakesheets and other jolly wenches and their fellows, as merry a crew as one’s heart could desire. Convey me thither, my little pigsnye, for I did ever dote on thee.’

‘Nay, good Belle, I am fast,’ quoth Peter, ‘the Devil be damned for it. I cannot stir till morning, with the cog to be berthed and the hold to be cleared.’

‘The Devil damn thee for a liar,’ cried the woman. ‘Thou couldst if thou wouldst, I warrant. Hast thou worn thy rotten carcass out in France that thou art afeared to put foot ashore, thou whoreson fish-head, thou? Thou art a radish and no man, a filthy remnant, a dead dog——’

‘What, thou old beldame,’ cursed Peter in good set terms, ‘thou scarecrow, thou bundle of rags and bones and paint, thou whited sepulchre, thou old corruption, thou waiting gravewoman. Hook thyself to some dead-drunken land lubber, for thou makest me retch to look on thee. Go to, thou art past thy trade, get thee to a hospital, thou.’

The woman replied to him with another volley of abuse, and then turning, retreated slowly into the darkness whence she came. Peter howled jeers and ribaldry after her as long as he judged her within earshot; then he settled himself once more upon his coil of rope and applied himself to his wine-stoup.

He laughed aloud. He had suddenly called to mind how he and other good fellows in the Holy Trinity had pillaged the Fleming barge off Gravelines, and how, after they had rummaged the vessel from stem to stern, they had hurled the mariners into the sea to swim their way home, if so they might. He remembered one fat Fleming in especial, who had made them almost burst with laughter, such comic antics did he cut when he understood what fate was to befall him. His face had turned pasty white and his eyes yellow with fear, he had pattered prayers like a priest in mortal terror of Hell Fire, and when they shoved him overboard into the sea, and he struck the water plump like a lump of lead, he had screamed out ‘Mother!’ ’Twas truly comical to hear such a fat old devil cry out for his mother as though he had been a two-years’ child. Peter fingered the dagger, which hung round his neck on a lanyard; it was a good dagger of fine Spanish steel, it had once hung from that same Fleming’s neck.

A bell began to toll from the town solemnly and dolefully.

It was the passing bell, rung that Christian men might pray for a soul upon the threshold of the great darkness. Peter listened for the mournful strokes, mechanically he counted them up till ten, and then began from one again.

Suddenly the bell ceased.

Peter knew that the soul had gone out into the darkness, and he crossed himself and said Pater Noster, as he had been taught to do as a child.

Then the fat Fleming recurred to his mind, but somehow he did not make him laugh this time. ‘Poor devil,’ he thought, and said Pater Noster again. He pondered silently for a long time, and his mind began to be strangely disturbed.

‘Pah!’ quoth he, shaking himself, and took another draught of wine, but the liquor had no taste and he put the tankard down. He looked upward to the sky; there was still no moon or stars to be seen, only blackness overhead and blackness all round, save for a little lightening in the East where the day would presently break. He thought of the woman who had just left him; then he thought of his mother, whom he had not seen these five years—five years which he had spent in roving, smuggling and pirating from the Hanse Ports to the Holy Land. God knows how many more sins he had piled on his conscience since the day he had last bid her farewell in the tiny apple-orchard behind the house. Then she had had a mad notion of going on a pilgrimage with him to Saint Thomas at Canterbury, and he had told her to keep her old bones safe by the fireside and to leave such junketings to young wenches. ‘Ah,’ she had answered, ‘I should be easier in my mind had thou and I made vows together at the tomb of the Holy Thomas.’ He had replied to her roughly to keep house and to say her prayers at home, and had trudged away without more ado in his ill-temper. He remembered her now standing under the trees and looking sadly after him. He thought there had been tears in her eyes, and at the time he had been fain to whistle to make his mind the easier.

Peter was an evil fellow, and he knew it. There were few knavish trades asea or ashore to which he had not turned his hand. Many were the gallows that ached for him, many were those who had vowed to have their own by him again, and many were the souls who would accuse him before the Righteous Judge at the Dreadful Doomsday. Yet his mother had taught him Ave, Pater Noster, and Credo as soon as he might run and talk, and had nurtured him in all good religion. Truly she was a godly woman, this mother of his, and she had borne a graceless son. Surely she would sit with the Saints at last around Our dear Lord’s feet, while he would have his portion in the Lake which burns with fire. If only with a word he could undo five years, why, then he might start again.

Through the darkness came the glimmer of moving lights and the sound of far-off voices singing in modulation and time. He propped himself on his elbow and strained his eyes and ears. The swinging lights approached, the singing came nearer; he heard the sound of feet on the rough causeway. A band of pilgrims, having risen before it was yet light, went on their way to Saint Thomas of Canterbury with their lanterns and staves in their hands, and their mouths filled with divine songs. In Gregorian cadence they sang the penitential psalms, and Peter listened as a man in a dream to their solemn chanting growing fainter and fainter in the distance, and watched their glimmering lanterns extinguished one by one in the obscurity.

It was as though he had seen a vision of the Saints of God going up with their lamps burning to the altar of the Most High, singing ‘Holy, holy, holy.’ He gazed after them, long after they had disappeared, with wide eyes and parted lips.

‘She was right,’ he said at length, speaking slowly to himself. ‘She is a godly woman. She shall go on pilgrimage with me, though it be to Rome itself.’

He thought of the blessed Saint Godric and how he had borne his mother Romewards on his back, and how an angel had come down from Heaven to help them on their way.

He waited for the morning to break.

II

Peter was footsore and weary. For three days he had walked from sunrise to sunset, and now, at the end of the third day, his shipman’s legs were stiff and his feet blistered almost to bleeding. But he valiantly stepped forward, looking neither to left nor right, aiding himself much by his staff, and planting his feet firmly on the rough way.

He began to recognise the landmarks. There, blue-black against the red-shot sky of sunset, lay the Cow’s Back, as he had seen it so often of old, like a barrier for ever dividing darkness from intolerable splendours; there, winding down and clothing the valley as far as the eye could reach in a mantle of sombre foliage, lay the Ravens Wood, in which he had so often gone shooting with his little bow when a boy; there, wave after wave in multitudinous succession swept the grassy uplands over which he had seen the villeins drive the herds in the fresh light of so many mornings of yore; there, clad in bramble and gorse and heather, stretched the wild common where he had been wont to gather the ripe berries in autumn.

And now, as he came nearer home, there was the splintered oak which folk called ‘the Fairies,’ round which he had danced with two little village girls for good luck when a lad; there were the two huge and solitary stones, by which he had played with his dead brother through many a long summer’s day; there was the standing pool upon which he had been wont to slide with the village boys in the hard winters; there was the desolate mere where he had found the bittern’s nest.

Meanwhile the red fire had faded from the western sky, and the shadows deepened and stretched outwards from under the hills. The mist came up and hid the land like a layer of cotton wool and soaked him to the skin. He plodded on.

At the last village folk had told him, ‘A good eight mile and he were best to stay there that night, for it was a rough road and one easy to miss.’ But he had replied that he was in haste and he knew the road. In the darkness he could distinguish little, but over the hill yonder should lie the church with the graveyard, in which rested his father’s and his father’s father’s bones. In the hollow below the hill and on this side of it should lie his mother’s house; at the top of the rise he should see it if there were only light enough. He hastened and climbed the rise. Down in the valley, a tiny yellow light glimmered feebly through the blackness. There was his home, and the candles burnt for his return. He hastened on again, breaking into a shambling run. As he drew near he fell into a walking pace, for he felt a sudden shamefacedness. Besides, he did not want to alarm his mother; honest wayfarers were few at that time of night, he thought.

He reached the door and put his hand upon the latch. Suddenly he stayed. An unearthly wailing came from within, the feeble and cracked voices of old women raised in a mournful melody. Peter’s breath came thick and fast, he almost choked, and his heart thumped like a hammer against his ribs. With an effort he lifted the latch and flung open the door.

Upon a table in the middle of the room lay the dead body of his mother, laid out for burial and swathed completely except for the face in white grave-clothes. Upon her bosom was set a small platter of salt, and at each corner of the table a rushlight burnt feebly. Four old women sat round the corpse and wailed the lyke-wake dirge.

Their ancient withered bodies swayed in time with the mournful air they sang, and cast fantastic shadows on the bare and plastered walls. Peter comprehended the scene in an instant.

At his entrance the hags abruptly ceased their wailing and, gazing upon him, sent up exclamations of recognition and surprise.

‘Eh, this is thy home-coming,’ quoth one.

‘Behold thy mother, thou evil son,’ cried another.

‘Art not ashamed?’ screamed the third, pointing to the corpse.

‘Thou serpent,’ cried the fourth.

Peter did not answer them. He stood uncertainly upon his feet as though he had been drunk, and trembled like a leaf. Then he went shakily across the floor and gazed upon the face of the dead.

One of the old women stole up behind him. ‘She hath gone to accuse thee before the Lord God,’ she screamed into his ear.

Peter turned and looked mournfully upon her with a face like death. ‘That she would never do,’ quoth he sadly.

Whereupon they snarled at him like she-wolves, he not answering them but standing like one sore perplexed and distressed. Then one began the dirge again, and the others held the burden. Peter turned and gazed steadily at them.

‘Go,’ he said, and pointed to the door.

They ceased wailing and looked at him dumbly. One began to utter words of abuse, but he pointed to the door again. So they gathered their rags about them and went out, muttering foully and casting spiteful glances upon him. He shut the door behind them.

Then he went and stood by the head of the dead woman and regarded her face steadfastly. It was as white as the linen which shrouded it, and the features as clear-cut and firm as they had been cunningly worked in marble; the majesty of an unutterable peace was on her countenance. Peter thought of the stone image of a holy nun he had once seen on a tomb in a great church at Bruges.

‘She was a very holy woman, although she was my mother and I am her son,’ he thought simply. ‘I am as foul as she was holy.’

He watched the dead hour after hour all through the night, and the whole of his life passed before his eyes as the life of every man will pass before the eyes of the Incorruptible Judge at Doomsday. Anon bitter tears fell like rain down his cheeks, anon his eyes were hot and dry as glowing coals; he tried to pray, but he had forgotten most of what his mother had taught him, and he had no wit to pray in his own language. Anon he passionately hated himself as Righteousness hateth Sin, anon he pitied himself with a pity nigh as great as Our Lord’s for the souls that are damned. The dead woman lying there shamed him all the while, but she could not rebuke him.

It neared the end of the last watch of the night, and the rush-lights guttered out one by one. Peter was moved with a mighty anguish and shaken like a reed from head to foot. He flung his arms round the dead woman and cried out with a loud and terrible voice, ‘Mother, forgive me, I did not know.’

The eyes of the dead woman slowly unclosed, her mouth opened and she spoke:

‘Son, keep me no longer here, nor cheat me of that everlasting rest that I have already found.’

Her eyes closed for ever, and Peter knew that of the dead there is no forgiveness.