by Robert Irwin
And turning, they all see that the boy is no longer a boy, but more like a man, and his head, torso, arms and legs are swelling at different speeds, so that his body seems to billow out, his skin has turned blue and there is a stench about him. The draug continues, ‘He made me a monster and a monster I shall be.’
He now towers over everybody in the courtyard. The draug lumbers towards Ripley, and as he begins to lower himself onto the terrified alchemist, Anthony, who can bear no more, runs to the gate. As he fumbles with the bolts of the gate, he hears cracking sounds which he guesses to be from the breaking of Ripley’s ribs under the weight of the draug. So then Anthony, having escaped from the place that he had thought of as a garden of enchantment, runs towards Cheapside.
Chapter Eighteen: Ludlow
Anthony and Edward Duke of York are standing at the battlements on the corner of the north tower of Ludlow Castle. They look out on the inner bailey, the chapel, kitchen and gatehouse. It has been a hard winter and it is snowing again and the drovers who are leading cattle into the castle to be slaughtered trudge with their heads down against the driving snow-laden wind. Horses are being taken out in the other direction to be exercised and though they stamp their feet and the grooms around them seem to be shouting, it is eerily peaceful above, for the snow deadens all sounds. Anthony has brought the young prince up here in the hope that this may clear their heads after a philosophical wrangle that has been going on all morning and much of the afternoon. Soon, too soon, the dark will come. Anthony points to the ravens that seem to dance around the column of smoke that rises from the great kitchen. Their gronking sound can only just be heard.
‘I think that ravens are as intelligent as men are,’ he says. ‘I have seen them gather on the eve of the battle, for they guess that there will be food for them on the morrow. I have seen them again after the battle, when they generally go first for the eyes of the slain. Do you remember the story I told you, the story of Bran and Branwen?’
Edward nods.
‘Well, Bran is Welsh for raven.’
But Edward is not to be distracted.
‘If I want to drop this snowball into the courtyard, I can. See? I have free will.’ And with that he drops the snowball into the courtyard. ‘No one made me do this. I did it because I wanted to.’
If only that were true. Anthony sighs. The morning had begun with a tussle in the classroom over a difficult passage in St Augustine in his reply to Simplicianus, the bishop of Milan: ‘To solve the question, I had previously tried hard to uphold the freedom of choice of the human will; but the Grace of God had the upper hand. There was no way out but to conclude that the Apostle Paul must be understood to have said the most obvious truth, when he said: “Who has made you different? What have you got that you did not first receive? If you have received all this, why glory in it as if you had not been given it?” ’
It seems to Anthony, that though this must be correct, it contradicts our lived experience, for we believe that we are free and act as if this is so. Also he thinks that it is much easier for a man of years to accept the deterministic doctrine of Augustine and Aquinas than it is for a youth to do so. The prince has most of his life before him and it shimmers with dizzy uncertainties and possibilities – of so many summers, dances, hunts, fights and the first love to come. It must feel as if fate will have no chance against the fierce energy of youth. But his years will still slip through his hands as Anthony’s have done.
Up on the battlements, Anthony tries again, ‘Let me put it another way. In order for you to make a choice, you must in the first place have chosen to have the sort of personality that can make choices, but in order to have chosen that sort of personality that can choose to make choices, you must previously have chosen for this to be so… And so we go back to the beginning of time without ever discovering the root of your alleged freedom. You look puzzled. Let me try again. You can do what you will, but you cannot will what you will. In a way, man’s condition is somewhat similar to a dog’s, for though a dog can think, it cannot think that it thinks. Just so, you cannot will what you will.’
But Anthony can never persuade the Prince, for of course, the abstract philosophical debate masks a more particular clash of wills. Of late, Edward has begun to challenge the burden of the stories that Anthony tells, and in particular, the Prince rejects what he sees as Anthony’s cult of doomed heroes – Merlin, Hagen, Roland, Arthur, all men who advanced knowingly towards their deaths, not to mention Jesus Christ and the legion of martyred saints who came after Him. Edward has declared that Roland deserved no fame at all, for he was determined to lose and determined that he and all the men with him should be killed by the Saracens. He ought to have blown his horn to fetch up reinforcements much sooner. When Edward is King, he will seek only victories.
And behind the Prince’s rejection of heroic fatalism, or craven fatalism as he thinks of it, there is a more personal issue at stake. The boy’s father is dying.
Anthony has tried to keep the news from him but everyone in Ludlow knows that the King has taken to his bed. Though he is only forty, his monstrous appetite for food and drink have taken their toll and he has an intermittent sweating sickness and he breathes with difficulty. Anthony’s own physician believes that the King has quartan fever. His son, who is only twelve and yet so intelligent, studious and hitherto obedient, is ceasing to be tractable, for he is desperate to see his father. He has already attempted to run away to Westminster, but the snow made riding difficult and he was intercepted by Anthony’s men before he reached Ludford Bridge. Anthony is waiting on letters from the Privy Council before escorting the Prince to Westminster. But it seems that they do not want the Prince to be present at his father’s deathbed. The Prince, who looks glum, mumbles something inarticulate before descending the tower.
Now Anthony is alone, he thinks back to the day he looked down from the White Tower on the army of Fauconberg and beyond to the farmsteads. Then he, like young Edward, thought that there were many possible roads to follow. So many years on he sees that there is only one and he wonders what will the world look like after he is gone? He has enjoyed acting as the prince’s surrogate father and teaching him all that he can. If only the King could hang on for a few more years or even a few more months…
Anthony knows that he has not won the debate with the boy, for his argument about having to will to will to will to be free and so on and on in an infinite regression must have sounded like mere sophistry. He should have tried some more ordinary argument, for over the years Anthony has learnt that he is not responsible for his actions, since he is made by his sex and lineage, as well as his rank, the commands of his King, the expectations of his peers and the code of chivalric honour. Almost ten years ago, when the King had announced that he was going to make him Governor to the Prince, Anthony had tried to refuse this office of honour that yet would lead to his certain death, but the King was adamant and besides Anthony thought that it would have been one thing to defy the King, but another to seek to thwart what God has decreed.
Later that day Anthony escapes from both Ludlow and the winter by entering the memory theatre that is lodged in his head. Tiptoft, who had instructed him in the art of constructing such a theatre, had emphasised the need for all the things or people one wanted to remember to be brightly lit. Consequently it is always a cloudless summer’s day in Anthony’s theatre. But though Tiptoft had sought to draw a picture for Anthony of some great circular edifice with tiers and niches in a vaguely Italianate manner and lit by a myriad of torches, this meant little to Anthony and instead he uses the Tower of London to store the people that he wishes to remember. The Tower of Memory is not like the real Tower with all that bustle and noise of guards, draymen and croaking ravens. Instead the Tower of Memory is deathly quiet. It is peopled with frozen figures, many of them have fixed imploring gestures, as if they were begging to be given life again. Tiptoft is naturally the presiding figure in this place and he stands at the entrance to the White Tower. He lo
oks angry, as if annoyed to be once more in the Tower. He displays a pair of skulls from his Museum, since he had instructed Anthony to be sure to attach a distinctive object or two to each person he wishes to recall. Anthony walks over to Tower Green where Black Saladin stands with his head down, as if grazing, and trapped in the cloths he wore on the day of the joust with the Bastard of Burgundy.
But where are the people from his childhood? Did he have a nurse? Who first taught him to ride and handle a sword? How was he instructed in Latin? How did his mother look when she was younger? He finds it impossible to get back to before the day of the Battle of Palm Sunday. What was England like before all the battles? He must have had a childhood, yet he can hardly remember a single incident. Anthony crosses Tower Green, as in a trance, ignoring various courtiers and servants who are standing about, to find Beth posed at the foot of the Beauchamp Tower. She is naked and holds a mirror before her and Anthony joins her in admiring the beauty of her pale and flawless flesh. It is difficult to tear himself away. Mary hates these trances of his. As she has come to know her husband better, she has become alarmed at his preoccupation with those who have died before him. More particularly, she guesses that when he enters his strange castle of the mind, he goes there to visit Beth. Though she is right about this, Beth is frozen and can only be admired as a beautiful painting and Anthony knows that he needs the human comfort and warmth of Mary.
There is a cluster of figures standing in front of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula including Anthony’s mother holding a tray of little lead figures, Scoggin with his pig’s bladder and Malory who holds a manuscript and a shield which displays his blazon. In front of the Wakefield Tower there is Ripley, who cradles the Talking Head and has an alembic at his feet. George Duke of Clarence is beside his enemy Ripley. He leans forward and rests his weight on the barrel of malmsey that was his death. Anthony reflects briefly on Ripley’s failure to control his stories and he wonders whether the characters he created will outlive their creator or not, or is it indeed the case that, ‘The enchantment dies with the enchanter?’
Clarence entered the memory theatre a little over five years ago. After the downfall and death of Warwick, Clarence felt himself cheated of most of the land that he should have inherited through his marriage to Isabel, Warwick’s daughter. Clarence, embittered, retired to Warwick Castle. What then brought matters to a head was the death of Isabel followed by the judicial murder of Ankarete Twyniho, a former servant of Isabel. Clarence’s retainers arrested Ankarete and a hasty trial was held at which she was accused of poisoning her mistress and Clarence stood over the jury to enforce their guilty verdict, whereupon she was hanged. Angered by this, Edward had Clarence’s associates investigated and soon found evidence that Dr John Stacy a fellow of Merton College had been suborned by Clarence to practice sorcery aimed at bringing about the deaths of the King and Prince Edward. Clarence’s supporters had also circulated prophecies that the King would shortly die. The hope was that the prophecies would be self-fulfilling, for when the King learned that he was imminently to die, the grief would kill him. When Clarence was foolish enough to protest the innocence of these traitors, he was arrested and sent to the Tower where a fortnight later, he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey, just as the Talking Head had foretold. It seems to Anthony that it is almost as if the Talking Head, by predicting such an improbable death, had actually made it happen. Soon Anthony supposes, he will have to induct King Edward to the theatre and perhaps then he will place him beside his wild and treacherous brother.
Finally Anthony walks over to the doorway of the Lanthorn Tower. There stands the Abbot of Crowland. He carries nothing but uses his hands in what must be a vain attempt to shield his eyes from a certain horror. Three years ago he received a letter dictated by the Abbot to his faithful Chronicler. The Abbot was most insistent that Anthony should take note of his recent strange experience. In it the Abbot related how he had lain in what he believed to be his deathbed and then indeed it did seem to the monks watching that the Abbot had actually passed away peacefully in his sleep. But the Abbot found that though he was no longer in the monastery’s infirmary, he was fully conscious. Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Follow the light’ and he found himself floating up through a tunnel of light at the end of which he was greeted by kindly figures in white robes and he thought that he understood that they were to lead him to his kinsfolk and friends who were waiting for him. But in this he was mistaken for the men in white robes then cast off their white robes to reveal black robes and they passed their skeletal white hands over their faces until both the faces and the hands were entirely black. They were so utterly black that they stood before him as cowled black spaces in the white radiance. ‘I am oblivion’, said one. ‘I am nothingness’, said another. ‘I am extinction’, ‘I am unbeing’, ‘I am emptiness’, and ‘I am a void’, followed. And the black men merged to become a great black maw which was going to swallow the Abbot up. But then all of a sudden the Abbot found himself back on his bed in the infirmary where the monks were astonished to see that he had returned to life. The Abbot’s letter concluded by asking Anthony to reflect on where a candle’s flame goes when it is snuffed out. A week later Anthony received another letter, this time jointly written by the Chronicler and infirmarian, informing him that the Abbot, who in his last moments had a look of stark terror on his face, had indeed now died.
Two weeks after this visit to the Castle of Memory Anthony is in the classroom with the Prince. They have set aside an attempt to translate a difficult passage in Seneca’s letters to St Paul and have turned with relief to a book in English. This is The History of Jason and it has been printed by William Caxton. When Anthony was last in London for a meeting of the Privy Council, he met with Caxton, who had abandoned his office in the Guild of Merchant Adventurers and he had fled abroad as a known supporter of the Earl of Warwick. When a few years later Caxton returned to England, he returned as a master of the German art of printing and he set up a shop inside the precincts of Westminster Abbey, next to the Chapter House. Anthony visited the shop and found Caxton to be a man after his own heart.
‘Where is the custom and usage of chivalry that there was in the past?’ Caxton demanded. ‘What do men now do but go to the baths and play at dice? Alas, they are asleep and take their ease. How many knights are there now in England who know their horse, their armour and their harness? People ought to read about the knights of the past and their noble deeds, and having read about how things were done then, they should seek to emulate the past. There must be more jousting and feats of arms performed in our own time.’
Of course, the demand for printed books will always be limited since their stubby black letters are so ugly. Nevertheless, Caxton hopes that his productions may serve to preserve older values against the corruption of the age. The printing press will be a kind of engine for holding back time. Since Anthony approved all this, he commissioned the printing of copies of his translation of The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers to be used in the education of the Prince and other noble youths. Then Anthony had funded the printing of The History of Jason. He has also pressed on Caxton the manuscript of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. But Caxton is reluctant to take this work on, since the manuscript is very long and badly ordered, so that it will need much editing. But he will think about it.
Back to The History of Jason. The story of Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece is an exciting one. The Golden Fleece, which Anthony supposes is the Holy Grail of pre-Christian times, hangs on a tree in the Grove of Ares outside Colchis on the shore of the Black Sea. Anthony visualises the coal-black waves lapping the sides of the Argo. But before Jason and his fifty handpicked paladins of ancient chivalry can reach the Black Sea and Colchis, there are many adventures and ordeals: Jason’s joust with Hercules at the court of Thebes, clashing rocks, the dangerously alluring water nymphs, the pestilential harpies, the six-handed Earth- born giants, the murderous royal boxer Amycus, the flock of bronze-w
inged birds and many other wonders and terrors. And at Colchis the royal sorceress Medea waits for Jason.
Edward was impatient to know what happened to Jason in the end, after he had gained the Golden Fleece, and Anthony had to tell him that Jason lived on to become an old man and was finally killed when a timber from the decaying wreck of the Argo fell on his head. Edward is disappointed and rightly so. How should this story have ended? How should stories ever end? Anthony finds the end of the centaur Chiron much sadder and yet more satisfying. As a boy, Jason had been educated by the learned and kindly Chiron. The centaur was skilled in almost all the arts and sciences and besides had the gift of prophecy. Though he was born immortal, after he was wounded by a poisoned arrow during the battle of Hercules against the centaurs, Chiron was in such constant pain that he prayed to the gods for the gift of immortality to be taken from him. So immortality was passed on to Prometheus and Chiron was allowed to die.
But it was while they were discussing the boring end of Jason that a messenger burst into the classroom and knelt in homage before the boy. His father died on April 9th and it is now April 14th. Thus for some days now, without knowing it, young Edward has been King. Now at last the Privy Council summons Anthony and his charge to hasten to Westminster. But they must hasten slowly, for many men have to be summoned and many things need to be requisitioned before the new King can set out from Ludlow with his escort of 2,000 Welsh men-at-arms.
Of course Mary, who is proud and excited, wants to accompany them to Westminster, for she wants to witness young Edward’s magnificent royal entry into London and then the coronation in Westminster, but Anthony, knowing how things will be, will not allow this. So he temporises and promises that she will be sent for as soon as the date of the coronation is fixed. She is surprised that the boy is not also excited about his coming coronation. Edward is weeping. Of course he mourns his father, but Anthony judges that Edward is sharper than Mary and that the boy guesses that something bad is about to happen. During the days of preparation Anthony takes care to be always busy and seen to be smiling. He must will the end.
