The REEVE was a slender and choleric man. His beard was closely shaved, and his hair was shorn around his ears like that of a priest. His legs were so long and so lean that he resembled a staff; you could not see his calves. But he was an excellent estate manager; he kept the granaries full, and the storage bins overflowing. No auditor could ever catch him out. He knew, from the intervals of rain and drought, how to calculate the harvests of seed and grain. This Reeve had complete control of the cattle and the sheep on his lord’s estate, as well as the pigs, the horses, the livestock and the poultry. I dare say that he even managed the worms. He had kept the accounts, under the terms of his employment, since the time his lord turned twenty. He paid out promptly, too. He knew every trick used by the farm-managers, and every excuse offered by the herdsmen and the servants. They all feared him as they feared the plague. He had a pretty little house upon a heath, overshadowed by green trees. In fact he could probably have afforded to buy more property than his lord and master, for he had secretly amassed a lot of money. He had learned how to take his lord’s possessions and then sell them back to him, so that he obtained both compliments and rewards equally. He could blear eyes better than any man in England. In his youth he had the sense to learn a good trade, and had become apprentice to a carpenter. Now he sat upon a sturdy horse. It was a dapple grey, and its name was Scot. He wore a long coat of dark blue cloth, which was hitched up around a girdle. By his side he carried a rusty sword. But he had no need to fight anyone. He was at peace with the world. He came from Norfolk, he told me, near a town called Baldeswell. I had never heard of it. He said that it was close to Norwich. But this did not enlighten me much. There is one other thing I forgot to mention. He was always the last rider in our little group.

There was a SUMMONER with us, unfortunately. He had the face of a fiery cherub, covered with pimples. He had swollen eyelids, adding to the unfortunate impression. He was as hot and lecherous as the proverbial London sparrow. His eyebrows were scabby, and the hair was falling out of his beard. You could understand why children were afraid of him. There was no medicine or ointment, no quicksilver or brimstone, no sulphur or cream of tartar, no white lead or borax, that could remove those unsightly pustules. They were like oyster shells on his cheeks. His diet may have had something to do with it. He loved onions, garlic and leeks, which are well known to nourish bitter humours; he drank the strongest red wine he could find and, in his cups, he would talk and cry out as if he were mad. ‘You are all janglers and clatterers!’ he said. He was looking at me at the time. When he was completely drunk he would speak only in Latin, and one evening he sang out the old rhyme:

He knew two or three Latin terms that he had learned from some ecclesiastical law-book. ‘I will give you,’ he said, ‘dispositio, expositio and conclusio.’ This was the kind of language he used when he summoned the citizens to the Church courts and the local assize. He had learned it all by rote. But we all know that a parrot can say ‘good-day’ as well as any pope. If anyone ever tried to question him further, then his well of learning suddenly dried up. He would cry out, ‘Questio quid juris?’, which is to say, ‘What point of law are you trying to make?’ And that was that. He was a bit of a buffoon, in other words, but some swore that he was kind-hearted. For the payment of a quart of wine, for example, he would allow some rascal to keep his mistress for a year; then he would excuse him completely. In secret he could pull a few swindles – and pull other things, too, if you know what I mean. If he came across any other scoundrel in flagrante he would counsel him to ignore any archdeacon’s curse or threat of excommunication. If a man’s soul was in his purse, only then would it be painful; only the purse was really punished. ‘The purse,’ he used to say, ‘is the archdeacon’s hell.’ In that, of course, he was wholly wrong. Every guilty man should fear the consequences of excommunication, just as absolution is the only salvation for the human soul. The wicked man should beware, too, of the writ that consigns the excommunicated to the prison cell. This summoner had the young girls of his diocese under his control; he knew all their secrets, and he was their sole adviser. He had a green garland on his head, just like those you see outside taverns. And he had made himself a shield out of a loaf of bread. As I said, he was a buffoon.

Riding in company with him was a PARDONER, working for Saint Anthony’s Hospital at Charing Cross. He had come straight from the papal court at Rome, where he had been granted his licence for the sale of pardons and indulgences. Now he could carry his staff wound with red cloth and sing out:

The Summoner joined in, with a strong bass voice, and their combined noise was louder than that of any trumpet. This Pardoner had hair as yellow as old wax, hanging down his back as limply as a bundle of flax and draped across his shoulders; it was very thin, and was gathered in tufts and clumps. He could have had rats’ tails upon his head. They were all the more visible because he refused to wear any kind of hood. The hood was considered by him to be out of date, so he kept it in his knapsack. With head bare, except for a round felt hat, he considered himself to be in the height of fashion. He had the large and timid eyes of a hare. On his woollen robe he had sewn small wooden crosses as well as the image of the Saviour imprinted on the handkerchief of Saint Veronica. His knapsack, which he carried on his lap, was filled with papal pardons smoking hot from Rome. ‘If any man full penitent come to me and pay for his sin,’ he said to me, ‘I will absolve him. If anyone gives seven shillings to Saint Anthony’s, I will bestow on him an indulgence of seven hundred years.’ I told him that I had scarcely enough money to pay my way. He had a voice as high as that of a nanny goat. He had no beard at all, nor was likely to grow one. His chin was as smooth as a girl’s arse. He was either a eunuch or a homosexual, a nurrit or a will-jick, as the common people put it. I did not wish to investigate further. Yet, as pardoners go, he was effective enough. In his bag he had a pillowcase, which, he told us, was the veil of Our Lady. He had a piece of the sail from the boat of Saint Peter. He had a brass crucifix, set with pebbles, which he announced to be a precious ornament from Bruges. In a glass reliquary he carried pigs’ bones, which, he claimed, were relics of the holy saints. If they were dipped into any well, the water from that well would cure all diseases. So he said. They did work in another sense. Whenever he came upon a foolish parson in the countryside, he would wheedle more money out of him than the priest himself earned in two whole months. So, with feigning and flattery and trickery, he made fools of the priest and the people. He had one virtue. It would be true to say that, in church, he was a notable performer. He was the very model of a modern ecclesiastic. He read out the liturgical texts during the mass and, best of all, he sang the offertories with gusto. He knew that, when the song was sung, he would have to preach and so modulate his voice that he might win more silver from the congregation. Therefore he took care to sing merrily and loudly. He was called ‘the devil’s rattlebag’.