Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [418]
But its greatest and most striking glory had only just been completed: this was the huge painting that spread from one side of the nave to the other above the chancel arch.
It was the painting of Doom.
Will was afraid of the Doom painting – with good reason. He could not read or write. He knew little even of religion except for what he had picked up from the occasional mumbled sermons of the priest at Avonsford or the knockabout religious mystery plays that the mummers sometimes performed in the city after Christmas. These plays, where one of the actors took the part of the devil, and another of his victim, were not unlike a Punch and Judy show; they reminded him that he would be soundly punished for his sins; but they were hardly frightening.
What he saw before him now was very frightening: for he had no doubt that it was an accurate picture of the terrible Day of Judgement. On the big wall over the arch that led to the choirstalls, towering over him and staring down into the nave, was the figure of Christ himself, seated on a rainbow, his hands raised and outstretched. Behind him were the splendid towers of the heavenly city. On his right hand, the naked dead were being raised by angels from their graves; some were escorted to the heavenly city: but many more were passing to the space on Christ’s left hand, the infernal regions where a great beast with a savage, gaping mouth was devouring them. It reminded Will of the ceremony he had seen one Whitsun at St Edmunds, where a huge painting, vividly depicting a skeleton in a grotesque, macabre dance, had been carried round the church to remind the people that they were soon to die. He would die soon – he knew that, and when he did, he would be shoved down the beast’s gaping mouth to the fires of hell; he was sure of it.
At one side of the Doom painting there was a full length, life-sized portrait of St Osmund. Assuming that this was exactly what Salisbury’s saint must have looked like, he gazed at it with awe.
The painting disturbed him too much; it was overpowering, and a few minutes later he was outside, on his way out of the town.
But the painting did not disturb Benedict Mason the bell-founder at all. As far as he was concerned, the more colour and ornament in the church the better.
It was one feature in particular that he had gone inside to look at: a small window on the south side – or to be exact, the lower portion of the right hand light of one window. For here, only a week before, he had installed at his own expense about a yard of stained glass. Will had not even noticed it when he went in, but Benedict stared at it with pride. It depicted in orange, red and blue, the figure of St Christopher who was blessing two small standing figures below him which, though they were crudely formed, could be recognised as the stout bell-founder and his wife. Underneath them in a clumsy gothic script were the words:
Gloria Dei. Benedict Mason et uxor suis Margery.
It was a modest memorial, nothing like the fine chantries of the nobles of the richer merchants, just as year after year his gifts of candles, wool and cheese for the church had been modest. But together with the obits which would be said for his soul by the priests when he died and the bells in Wiltshire churches which bore his name, the little stained-glass window would ensure his immortality, and the thickset craftsman was satisfied.
Of his ancestor Osmund the Mason who had carved such wonders in the cathedral he knew nothing at all. And so it was with genuine pride that he told his wife:
“I’m the first of our family to leave his mark in this city.”
He did not notice young Will at all.
The dark thunderclouds that had appeared from the west had already gathered overhead as Will passed the deserted castle hill of Old Sarum.