The Last English King

by Julian Rathbone

  But most magnificent of all, to their left as they entered the square, were the domes and half-domes climbing like foothills to the huge domed drum in the middle. Walt seized the traveller’s thin, freckled bare arm.

  ‘What is that?’ His voice was now a hoarse whisper.

  ‘The Church of Holy Wisdom.’

  ‘Then that is where I shall find what I seek.’

  Walt turned and headed across the marble towards the big, black, round arched door, open like a whale’s mouth. As he approached the steady beat of a repeated note sung in a deep bass voice came to his ears, and the tinkling of bells.

  Once inside he knew he was in heaven. The huge interior was far brighter than it had seemed from across the sunlit square. The base of the central dome was ringed with forty arched windows, and beneath it four more arches, the east and west ones themselves half-domes, also pierced with lights. Below these, four galleries, each with fifteen columns, were supported by forty taller and larger columns rising from the floor. No two capitals were the same but all intricately and fantastically carved.

  Everywhere there was light and colour. The dome and semi-domes seemed to float on light or on the smoke from countless thuribles and candles. Every wall was revetted with marbles of various hues and patterns, often cut in veneers that echoed each other in mirror fashion. The columns were all of marble, save for the largest eight on which all else rested. These were a deep-striated, glimmering red - porphyry, from the Temple of the Sun in Baalbek.

  Weaving between them or grouped around altars a hundred priests and acolytes, all in vestments and copes studded with jewels, embroidered with gold, some wearing high hats that swelled at the crown beneath jewelled crosses, sang masses in a language the wanderer did not recognize, swinging gold and silver thuribles and chanting in the long, deep repeated way he’d heard from outside -- a quite different chant from the undulations of the one used by the monks at home.

  More wonderful still were the mosaics which filled every space available, but especially the curved three-sided spaces where three circles or semi-circles touched. In most the background tesserae were gold. In the four spaces below the dome there were colossal cherubim; round all the walls angels, prophets, saints and doctors of the church. On the circle of the apse the Virgin sat enthroned, flanked by archangels with banners inscribed in an alphabet Walt could not read.

  But the greatest of all, filling the inside of the great concave semi-globe of the central dome, was the Pantocrator Himself -- the creator of all things, He who made Heaven and Earth and all that therein is, the Creator-Redeemer, throned against a lapis lazuli heaven studded with gold stars, the Judge inflexible yet compassionate, his complexion the colour of wheat, hair and eyes brown, grand eyebrows, and beautiful eyes, no beard or moustache, clad in gorgeous clothing, humble, serene and faultless.

  Walt, drowning in incense, his mind bereft of rational thought by the chanting and the chiming bells, span on his heels and fell backwards, stunning himself on the marble floor. His eyes met those of his Creator, precisely one hundred and seventy-nine feet above him, before he sank away. Out of the darkness that closed around him, a cowled but female figure, huge but not threatening, Mnemosyne, memory, the Titan mother of the Muses, led him down dark labyrinths which finally opened out, as if he were emerging from a cave in a hill-side on to just that, a hill-side steep and stepped . . .

  Whirling axes caught fading sunlight, arrows like hail sliced down the airways, swords crashed and cracked on helmets and shields. Horses neighed and screamed, blood spattered and ran in rivulets, mingling with that of their riders. The chorus of warriors eager for battle had faded and gone, only the cawing of carrion birds hung high in the air. Hewing and slashing, their arms weighted with woe, the housecarls laboured, silent in pain, too weary to lift their lime-wood shields. Crushed by despair the fight had gone from them, knowing no miracle now would amend it. Empty of hope, they welcomed the death stroke and those who were lucky fell to its falling. Yet one duty remained, blazoned with splendour, the calling and doom of ail who stood near him, to die by his side or fall by the fallen . . .

  ‘Are you all right?’

  His head was cradled on the traveller’s thighs. The traveller let water drip from his gourd on to a rag and gently soothed Walt’s brow. A priest and an acolyte or two looked over his shoulder. Concern and scorn chased each other across their faces.

  ‘If you are well enough to walk, we should go, you know? There are rules, regulations, about how one should behave . . .’

  The traveller’s hand shifted to the back of his neck, applied an upwards pressure.

  Walt resisted it. He focused his gaze and met the eye of the Pantocrater above him, Jesus in judgement.

  ‘I thought, when I came in here, I was in Paradise. I was wrong. Paradise is where I came from and now I am in hell.’

  Slowly, but with more ease than he had expected, he pushed his feet beneath him and momentarily placing his stump on the traveller’s arm for support, he hauled himself to his feet.

  ‘Now, I want to go back.’

  And he headed towards the semi-circle of sunlight, brighter even than all the brightness around him.

  But when he was out, and the heat hit him like a wall, he sank to his knees again at the foot of the column that bore the Emperor Justinian, lifted his stump into the air and bellowed.

  ‘But I can’t. I can’t, can I? Not after what I have done.’

  ‘They do say,’ the traveller said, correctly interpreting the broad gist of this remark, ‘that a pilgrimage to the place of Our Lord’s Crucifixion, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, undertaken in a spirit of contrition, wipes out all but the most mortal of sins.’

  With his hand under Walt’s elbow he lifted him up again.

  ‘I’m going that way myself, though, not, I have to say out of any desire to wipe out sin.’ He continued: ‘Perhaps we could travel together. After I’ve seen what this place has to offer. I go by the name of Quint. No more and no less.’

  Walt put his left hand on Quint’s right shoulder, and wiped a tear on the sleeve that flopped over his stump.

  ‘I am Walt, Walt Edwinson. How far is it to the Holy Land?’

  ‘I reckon we’re about halfway there. Perhaps a bit more.’

  In fact, he never made it to Jerusalem for at that moment, in the Constantinian Forum of Byzantium, Walt’s redemption had begun.

  Chapter Three

  Quint was in no hurry to leave Constantinople. It was, he said, the greatest city in Christendom, perhaps even in the world, though other travellers he had met talked of an even greater city in far off Cathay.

  ‘Perhaps I will go there,’ he said, ‘when I have seen you safe to Jerusalem.’

  He had some money hidden, apart from the coppers he kept in his purse, in seams and odd crannies of his clothing. He was always able to find a gold coin to buy them out of trouble, the change from which refilled his purse with bronze and silver. He considered himself a pilgrim and self-consciously kept the traditional gear of the pilgrims who go down the Milky Way in north Spain to the Field of Stars in Santiago. That, he said, had been his first pilgrimage and he kept the staff, the gourd, the cockle-shell and sandal shoes of those who make that trip.

  From Santiago he had taken a tin-trading boat to Porlock, the nearest port to Glastonbury, where the merchant Joseph of Arimathea, uncle of Jesus, had taken the infant Christ on a trading trip (‘Nice country,’ said Quint, ‘pleasant pastures, clouded hills, that sort of thing.’ ‘I know,’ Walt replied), then Rome and the shrine of St Peter and the Colosseum where so many Christians had died in the jaws of lions or at the hands of gladiators, and to less important places whose names he had forgotten.

  There was no piety in any of this, or none that Walt could see. Quint had one purpose in life -- to move, relentlessly on and on, punctuating his journey with the greatest marvels he had heard tell of. When he reached them he stopped -- for a few days, a week at most, and gawked at the sights
with some understanding but little awe until they bored him, then he shouldered his back-pack again and was off.

  On this occasion, perceiving that his new companion was weak and needed rest, he took him back down the hill to the remains of the old Constantinian fortifications they had passed just after disembarking from the ferry, and found an empty cave or burrow which was enough to keep him out of the sun during the day and protected from the dew at night. He unslung his pack and from it pulled a sack made of quilted stuff and spread it for Walt to lie on, found a fountain and refilled his gourd which he left by Walt’s side. Then he touched the brim of his leather hat and was off.

  He returned at dusk with a small loaf of sesame-seeded bread, a handful of the golden downy plums which he said were called apricocks, and a pair of coddled duck eggs. Side by side they sat on the quilted sack and slowly ate what really was, when Walt thought about it, a very adequate feast. They were quite high up and could see over the wall and a strip of the now black Bosphorus to the woods of Asia beyond. A crescent moon, thin as a finger-nail, hung above the continent. Round them, in caves hollowed from the bricks and stones of the old walls, a small tribe of Athinganos, Egyptians some called them, played their pipes and strummed their primitive guitars to the muted wailing of their songs.

  Quint was excited by the crescent moon.

  ‘What,’ he said, ‘the people of this doomed city do not know, what they have not been told, is that even now a nation of the most war-like people on Earth are sweeping out of Syria. They have captured fortresses by the score, routed armies by the dozen and by now are probably entering the ancient city of Iconium.’

  ‘Where is Syria?’ Walt asked.

  ‘Oh, down there,’ Quint waved his hand in roughly the right direction, south-east, ‘and you see their emblem, the standard they fight under, is the crescent moon. Already Asia is theirs.’

  ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘Turks. Seljuk Turks. And their leader is called Alp Arslan, which in their language means lion, and he is the greatest warrior since Alexander.’

  Walt thought he remembered the name, Alexander, that is, but wasn’t sure.

  Quint was quiet for a time, finishing his supper. The warmth of the city flowed over them, the smells of wood smoke and charcoal, the lights in the streets and houses, the stars and the moon, the Romanies’ soft laments.

  ‘You know,’ he said at last, ‘you spoke of a paradise lost, better than heaven.’ He stroked the air in front of him. ‘Better even than all this?’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘All right.’ He spread his knees, let his hands loll between them, his chin rested on his collar-bone and he closed his eyes. ‘Picture this,’ he said.

  I am on a long high hill whose lower slopes are covered with hawthorn in blossom, blackthorn now finished, the sloes like tiny green tear-drops just forming. The upper slopes and crest have few shrubs for here the chalk beneath is only a few inches below the turf and the thin top soil supports grass only but in high summer a garden of flowers as well. It is an ancient place, for the old people dug out two ditches one above the other, throwing up high ramparts of earth and chalk now grassed over. And on the top within the ramparts and along the whale-backed ridge they had a town, or so the slaves we have, descendants of the old people, still say. And still they climb the hill on certain days in the year and perform ceremonies . . . but this is not to the point.

  From this hill I look down upon a plain called the Vale of the White Hart. It is part lush pasture watered by the brooks that run from springs in the chalk hills to the river Stour, it is part fields of waving corn, green now as I look at it, blue green, just on the cusp of turning - bearded barley, nodding oats, tall rye, and wheat for the white bread the thegns, earls and royal house demand. And much of it is woodland oak, beech, sweet chestnut and holly where deer roam, foxes, but not wolves any more, though the oldest of us can remember wolves. Nobody claims ever to have seen a white hart.

  ‘Hang on a moment. How old are you in this dream of paradise?’

  ‘Sixteen. I think. I have just returned from my first campaign, the first time I served my lord in the field.’

  ‘Your lord?’

  ‘Harold Godwinson.’

  Quint drew in breath, glanced at the stump where Walt’s arm ended, and let out a slow whistle.

  ‘Go on,’ he murmured.

  Two farmsteads or manors. The nearest, half a mile away, lying to my right and right under the steepest slope of the hill, is called Shroton. The further, nearly three miles off and nestling beneath another line of hills that run roughly north to south, is called Iwerne.

  ‘That has a Jutish, Ytene ring to it.’

  This time it was Walt who looked across with wary surprise. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. A monk from Shaftesbury Abbey had said much the same to him.

  They have many similarities, these farmsteads. The dominant building in each is a hall, timber framed, with a second floor at the inner end beneath a roof of shingles. Around it cluster bowers for the children and women, outhouses, barns, stables and the hovels where the poorest live.

  ‘Slaves?’

  ‘Slaves, but – ‘

  ‘But you treat them well, like family, really.’

  Walt sensed irony, felt a tremor of anger.

  ‘Very well.’

  He could have gone on to say how most were eventually freed one way or another and took their place in this well-ordered society as free gebors, moving out to the village beyond, gaining some land they could call their own, but he was aware that in many ways the status of a freedman, forced to give endless labour in return for the right to work a few acres of land he could just about call his own, was not, if at all, preferable to that of a straight slave.

  All this fenced, and outside maybe ten or fifteen cottages, each housing a family of churls or freemen, and then, in the case of Shroton, Iwerne did not have one, the church. This was no more than a shed really, timber-framed, the walls of daub and wattle like the cottages, but painted with scenes of Our Lord’s Life, done by an artist from Winchester, His nativity, changing water to wine, the Resurrection. No resident priest, but a pastor comes from Shaftesbury Abbey every Sunday and Holy day to say Mass and, when sent for, to celebrate weddings, christenings and funerals. Round this the fields, those in the Lord s demesne, those held by lease or freehold by the cottagers, those held in common, are worked by all and, at the time Walt is remembering, it works well, it all works, better than ever it has before. That’s what the old people say, and they bless King Edward who is surely a saint and keeps all things just and smooth and kind and well. And, Walt adds, his servant Earl Harold Godwinson and his sibling earls who keep the coasts and borders so well that harrying and ravaging from intruders are things of the past, almost forgotten.

  Lord? We are not lords, neither my father at Iwerne nor Erica’s at Shroton. We have our place in the order of things. Every man should have a lord. So my father is the manor lord of these people, but above him is his lord, the Earl of Wessex, Harold Godwinson, and above Harold, saintly King Edward, and above Edward - God.

  ‘The Pope?’

  ‘Fuck the Pope.’

  And because there is order, an order we all accept . . . listen, we did, I’ll tell you how. The serfs and the gebors meet together and if they have an improvement in our lives to suggest or a complaint to make, they pass it on. The freemen all sit in the village or hall moot once a month. Under the shire’s sheriff representatives of every moot meet twice or four times a year in the hundreds moot, that is representing the people of all degrees who live in a neighbourhood originally sustaining a hundred families, though latterly the number has risen. And the Witan of the land, the earls, bishops and abbots, the greater thegns and ealdormen meet with the King twice yearly. It works. It is a system where every voice in the land is heard from the base of the pyramid to the top.

  ‘The Greeks have a word for it.’


  ‘They do?’

  ‘Democracy.’

  Anyway, that is paradise, that is how things should be. Even when the great storm came the year before I was born, and the earthquake when I was eight, and the murrain that killed the cattle, things were put right, made the best of and soon the swallows return, the grapes ripen on the southern slopes, the honey flows like honey and is made into mead and the girls dance, how they dance, and the cattle give creamy milk and the pigs die in November for the Christmas feasts, and though there is hard work, hard work for everybody, nobody suffers needlessly and even the cottars and gebors and slaves know that their lord and his lord will protect them and feed them when times are bad, and that is better than grubbing a meagre living from your own few acres ... It is better than anything I’ve seen in all my travels . . .

  But Quint was asleep and snoring.

  Four days later he came back in a vile temper.

  ‘This place,’ he said, ‘is shit. We’re off’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They have here in the treasury of the church of Holy Wisdom a reliquary, one of many hundreds. This, gold and crystal, jewelled with pearls, amethysts and garnets, houses a withered head. And whose do you think they say it is?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘They say it is that of St James, the cousin of Jesus.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The head and body of St James are buried in the Field of Stars at Santiago in Iberian Galicia. These Greek people are liars and cheats.’ Even as Walt stood, Quint rolled up the quilted sack and stuffed it in his backpack.

  ‘Jerusalem! Yes?’

  Chapter Four

  Four bronze coins got them across the Bosphorus. They disembarked at Chrysopolis, a bustling town with a frontier air to it not unconnected with the fact that behind it lay the great hinterland of Asia Minor, its forests, mountains, plains and deserts sparsely populated, except on the coasts, by ancient tribes who acknowledged the Eastern Emperor as their lord, paying him tribute, but no loyalty. Indeed, already many had sided with Alp Arslan and his Seljuk horde. Walt and Quint followed the quay until it ended in a gate and then set off along what was little more than a sandy path, but a delightful one nevertheless since it skirted the north bank of the Propontine Sea, the almost landlocked water that is the gateway to the Pontus, the Black Sea, which gives it its name.