An Affection for Tumblers

 

An Affection for Tumblers.

 

 

When I was nine years old, travelling with my parents on a long car journey, my mother entertained us with stories. One story in particular stayed with me.

She told of a monastery in the middle ages where the monks offered prayers to a statue of the Virgin Mary. One monk had been a tumbler and juggler and to honour the Virgin he tumbled and juggled before the statue. The Virgin showed her pleasure by coming down from her niche and embracing the monk.

This is a famous medieval story, “Our Lady’s Tumbler,”. The tale is here: https://mednar.org/2012/06/13/our-ladys-tumbler/

The story was depicted in a stone carving in Exeter Cathedral. A replica of this carving can be seen here: https://www.fabriziositzia.com/portfolio/our-ladys-tumbler-exeter-cathedral-replica/

Clearly the Virgin Mary in medieval times had an affection for tumblers, an affection that other medieval people also held. In 1306 an acrobat, Matilda Makejoy, was paid by the royal household. Such dancers could be athletic and graceful or tumble in a jesting manner, playing for laughter. They could also be well paid and respected - Richard II paid John Katerine, a dancer from Venice, over £6 for playing and dancing before him, a sum not far short of £3,000 today.

The character of that juggling monk intrigued me. As a tumbler and juggler he would have probably been a performing player. Someone independent, not tied to land or manor or place. Someone lithe and acrobatic, used to surviving by his own skills and wits.

Later I took that germ of a character and created Geraint, the brash, cunning juggler who becomes an ally to my medieval female exorcist Yolande. Geraint is suspicious of all authority and stands up to everyone- a vital skill in helping my heroine.

 

Here’s an excerpt with Geraint at his determined, stubborn best.

 

“You know this man?” Michael Steward forgot the plight of his three daughters in his doughty disapproval of her companion, who grinned and clapped his bare feet together like a pair of hands.

“Geraint Welshman is my servant.”

That was the lie she and Geraint had decided upon yesterday evening so that she could spend last night at the reeve’s house, and Geraint would spend it watching the graveyard and church for any sign of revenants.

So what is he doing in the stocks? Look at him, winking at me and juggling pebbles for the crowd. He may be a strolling player, but does he have to turn every occasion into a show? He can be out of those stocks in a moment. Why isn’t he?

A buxom matron pushed to the front of the tightly knit group. “He stole a loaf of my bread and put his hand up my dress!”

Geraint answered roundly, “I paid for the bread, goodwife, with my tumbling, and kept my hands to myself.” Iron bit into his next words. “This I swear, especially the last.”

“You call me a liar to my face?”

“I say you are mistaken. No more, no less.”

Yolande knew he was aggrieved. Geraint might filch a king’s deer or a lord’s trout but he did not thieve from the people and he never made free with his fingers. Glancing at the blush on the older woman’s neck, she understood the desire—did she not feel it herself, every day?—but even so, matters had gone far enough.

“I have two good silver pennies here to see my servant set free, before his feet rot off,” she intervened, hoping she sounded tart and disinterested.

Sprawling in the stocks as if on the most comfortable of thrones, Geraint rolled her another bow. “Lady, you are all grace, but I wish to prove my innocence.”

 

To see what happens next, please see my novel “Dark Maiden”.

 Link here:

Lindsay Townsend