In England circa 1380, a troupe of traveling actors makes its way across the medieval landscape, where to go 20 miles from home was to enter a world of strangers. In London at about the same time, Geoffrey Chaucer was writing about another group on the road pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. His Knight, learning from the journey, declared: "This world is but a thoroughfare full of woe,
And we be pilgrims, passing to and fro.
Death is an end to every worldly sore." The actors arrive at much the same conclusion in "The Reckoning," when they arrive at a village where a murder trial is under way. A mute woman (Elvira Minguez) has been charged with the death of a local boy and been sentenced to death as a witch. The actors by their nature are more worldly and sophisticated than the village folk, and after questioning the woman through sign language, they begin to doubt her guilt. It is at first no affair of theirs, however, and they unload their props and costumes