At last one dissenting voice raised the problem that none had dared to air.
‘I speak humbly,’ said the Abbot of Glastonbury, a very old man indeed, ‘and with no desire to show disrespect to anyone here, but is it not a hard matter that Harold Godwinson swore, on ancient and holy relics, that he is Duke 'William’s man and will support the Norman claim to our throne?’
A sort of muted uproar followed through which Ealdred’s voice, old though he was too, came loud and clear.
‘That was falsely extorted from Harold. He gave it out of compassion for his kin whose lives were, he believed, in danger. But even without that the oath is of no consequence,’ he boomed. ‘The crown is not his to offer. He was promising what is not his to give. Only the Witan itself, assembled here as we are, can dispose of it, only the Witangemot has that power and privilege. The law and yet more ancient traditions of England declare this to be so.’
And so it went on, with more certainty since that particular problem had been faced and dealt with. And soon the meeting reached a point where all knew for sure that Harold would be acclaimed with no dissenting voice -- the Norman clergy, led by William of London, had all slipped away, most already with bags packed, heading for the channel ports. But as always on such momentous occasions many there, young as well as old, wished to leave their mark on the proceedings and say their bit -- even though they were repeating what had been said ten times already. But at last Ealdred took Harold’s arm, raised it and cried: ‘Let us choose and proclaim, Harold - King of England,’ and all there repeated what he had said with a great shout.
Edwin and Morcar joined Leofwine and Gyrth and wrapped a crimson gown embroidered with gold round their King and led him to a great throne set on the chancel step below the choir. The globe and sceptre were brought out and handed to him and Ealdred raised the crown that had been taken from the Confessor’s head three hours before and placed it on Harold’s. The big doors were thrown open and all the most prominent people of London who had walked the three miles as soon as they had heard of the King’s death flooded in in a great throng.
And on Harold’s left Stigand of Canterbury spread his arms and proclaimed:
‘Hic residet Harold Rex Anglorum. Here is throned Harold, King of the English.’
Harold’s first act, performed before he left the abbey church, was to sign the charter that legalized Morcar’s title to Northumbria and his second was to name Lady Day as the day on which he would marry Aldyth.
That night he and his brothers filled the great hall of Westminster, where the old King had so recently died, with all the housecarls there was room for. They spent it in music, drinking and boasting, as men must do, of the exploits they would dare to perform for their lords. By daybreak William the Bastard had been shaved, stripped, buggered, dismembered and disembowelled after being overcome in a hundred different single combats -- and every Norman who dared set foot on English soil with him.
Towards midnight the king slipped away and Walt followed the cloaked and booted figure over the crackling snow, under the glow of frosty starlight, towards the great white building that seemed, from a distance, to fill a whole quadrant of the world around them. Once actually under its walls you felt there was nothing else on earth.
The king pushed open the door to the south-facing transept and paused until his eyes had adjusted to the deeper darkness. There were candles, but not many, and a couple of oil lamps that may or may not have burned in front of the reserved Host. At all events, Harold showed no inclination to bend his knee in front of them. Enclosed in that heap of white stone, their light was dimmer than that of the stars outside.
Walt followed his master round to the right, leaving to their left the high, stone block that made a sacrificial altar of the table at which Christ broke bread and drank wine with his friends. Thus Harold came to the stone flags that lay like presses over the body of Edward. He bowed his head, but not in prayer. Then he sighed, and then sighed again, almost as if he were in pain. Walt could not resist a movement towards him, which Harold heard.
‘Walt? Is that you?’
‘Yes . . . Sire.’
‘Fuck that, Walt. I shan’t trust you the way I did if you “Sire” me. Come here.’
Walt stood beside him.
‘You’d think we’d done it, wouldn’t you? To hear the cheers this afternoon. “May the king live forever.” I don’t think so. If we make it through to this time next year, then maybe we’ll have got away with it. But Eddie. Dear Eddie. He’s left a path through brambles ahead of us, with hidden traps and pitfalls. Wherever he is, he’s waiting for us to fall into them.’
He sighed again, then looked up and around him at the piled-up pillars, the high, rounded arches, the black spaces where the windows would be, at the guttering candles, and he shivered.
‘In one single day, Walt, and just one week and a day after it was consecrated, this church has become the grave of an English king and seen an English king crowned. If things turn out as Eddie in heaven and the Bastard on earth want them, there won’t be any more English Kings. Not properly English, not what you or I would call English.’
PART VI: 1066
Chapter Thirty-Nine
‘So’ said Quint, ‘the armourers throve, young men sold pasture to buy a horse, and honour was all anyone thought about.’
‘Something like that,’ Walt replied, pounding the ground with a stick he had cut from a hazel tree an hour or so earlier.
‘I have been told it takes two men three weeks to make a serviceable sword,’ Taillefer remarked. ‘Is that really so?’
They were toiling up the northern side of the very last range of the Taurus to what their guide had promised them was the very last pass from which, he assured them, they would be able to see the ocean and from which, apart from the odd foothill here and there, the way would now be downhill. Which was just as well. After three days in the mountains most of the caravan’s animals were exhausted and all but a few of the travellers now walked with their beasts some chivvying them from behind with sticks, others dragging them from the front with halters.
‘That is so.’ The slope zig-zagged through scrub oak which clung to the precipices so the roots were often exposed in the fissures of the limestone cliffs. Some of the trees had succumbed and lay two hundred feet below in a river-bed of chalky water that scurried over lichened boulders. Panting a bit, Walt did his best to explain.
‘It must have enough weight to smash through armour or deliver a blow so heavy that the recipient is driven to the ground even though his helmet or mail remains unpierced. Yet clearly it must not be so heavy that a strong man cannot wield it from dawn to dusk. This is a matter as much of balance as weight. Second, it must be supple, it must not break. Indeed, the blades of the very best swords can be bent so the point almost touches the hilt before springing back, undistorted. Then it must have an edge that is bright, sharp and will resist denting. The Wayland hardens the edges by adding carbon or even slag. Every time the metal is cooled it is plunged into the piss of a mare. Preferably taken from one in heat. Finally, of course, the sword’s quills, hilt and pommel must be decorated, inlaid with gold, silver, copper and enamels in a way that will enhance or reflect the rank and reputation of its owner.’
‘That is, of course, very important indeed,’ Quint remarked drily.
‘Indeed, yes. The quality and decoration will strike fear into the heart of the foe, while at the same time, if he is a worthy contestant, spurring him on to greater efforts of strength and daring.’
Not for the first time Quint sensed a contradiction that lay beyond the grasp of his rational mind, though he supposed it made sense to most Englishmen.
‘So, how is this miraculous blade forged?’ Taillefer persisted.
‘Well, the smith, the Wayland, first of all chooses iron bars that he knows have been properly prepared, with the right spells and so forth. He casts them in sandy grooves some three feet long and an inch or more across. He is no ordinary smi
th, you understand, this is not a matter of plough-shares or bill-hooks, he has to know all the ancient lore . . .’ ‘Fiddlesticks,’ said Quint.
‘Then he takes three of these bars or rather rods of best iron,’ Walt went on, ignoring him, ‘and he and his fellow-smith heat them until they are beyond red hot in a brick furnace over alder charcoal . . .’
‘Which, of course, has magical properties,’ Quint again interjected.
‘No,’ Walt replied evenly. ‘Indeed, rather otherwise. Some woodfolk rate it a peasant tree because it grows by rivers and in water-meadows. The point is that its charcoal burns hottest. Then, using giant pincers, the Wayland and his mate twist each rod through several turns before forge-welding them together. It is these twists that give the blade its suppleness. The whole process is called pattern-welding. They beat them together into a blade shape, but leaving a long groove down the middle called the fuller. This adds to the suppleness of the blade and lightens it too, without reducing its strength. Finally they work on the edges in the ways I have described.’
‘The patterns, of course are runic, and carry magical properties . . .?’
But before Walt could give way to the irritation that was mounting at Quint’s repeated if mild scoffing, they saw Adeliza and Alain running down the zig-zag of the track, dodging between the camels and donkeys and, where the slope between was not too steep, launching themselves through the low thickets across rather than round the hair-pin bends. Adeliza was now on the very threshold of womanhood, had seemed to ripen even in the three weeks or so since Walt had first seen her dance in the darkened room to Alain’s harp-playing. Now, in the sunlight, in a short shift which came only just below her knees, and with her long tresses breaking out of the narrow bands that bound them, she looked like a wild young doe or maybe a Valkyrie’s daughter.
Alain, annoyed that his sister held the lead, cut across the last bend and took a tumble that scoured his knees and brought him rolling to their feet.
‘We are at the top,’ they cried, ‘the donkey at the front’s at the top. There’s a spring too. And you can see the sea, but it’s not blue or green, but gold . . . Gold and all rippled and ruffled like a big gold plate. Or a shield. The shield of Achilles Dad sometimes sings about. And big rowboats on it, with five-banks of oars . . .’
‘Quinqueremes bound for Nineveh?’ Taillefer suggested, feeling a song or lay coming on.
‘You couldn’t possibly see how many banks of oars at this distance,’ cried Adeliza.
Actually,’ said Walt, but no one now paid him any attention at all, ‘the patterns, though regular and intricate, and often pointed up by polishing or inlay, are a natural result of the process. Hence the term -- “pattern- welding”.’
The view was magnificent indeed. In Lydian Pamphylia the Taurus Mountains are never far from the sea and rise to seven or eight thousand feet within some five or six leagues of the beaches. The narrow coastal plain edges a bay like a jade necklace hung with clusters of pearls - Adalia, Perge, Aspendos and Sidé - the four principal cities of the region. So rich is the land, it was able to support these cities, each with its forum, temples, theatre, circus and harbour, though no more than five leagues separated each from each. At the time Walt set eyes on them they were already in decline - deprived of the Pax Romana, they were at the mercy of pirates and suffered conquest and reconquest by satraps, caliphs, kings, emperors and Christians of both persuasions on an almost yearly basis - yet still they thrived.
The first source of this wealth were the mountains themselves with their abundance of timber, game, furs and above all minerals of all sorts from the most precious to the most base. Then came foothills covered with vines and olives, and in the plain itself, already providing a new source of almost inestimable wealth from the rich riparian soil, the finest cotton, better even than that of Egypt. There were the new fruits brought in by Arabs and Turks from the Orient: oranges and citrons, sugar-cane, apricots, aubergines, spices like cumin and coriander, types of melon hitherto unknown in Europe, jasmine, carnations and many other fragrant flowers from which perfumes could be distilled, and, of course, the roots and grain that have always nourished the poor, beasts of burden and beasts of the field.
Finally, fish. That night they dined off a clawless lobster three feet long. Being English Walt was sure a clawless lobster was an aberration, a creature of the devil, and highly poisonous, at least. It needed considerable persuasion on the part of his friends to get him to eat any of it at all.
And course, this paradise was warm, even, in late October, hot at midday and well into the night.
That night? That night they feasted in Junipera’s house -- for that, not Jessica at all, nor Theodora, was, Walt now believed, the name of their patroness, she of the peacock shawl, emerald snood, red hair and golden slippers. Over the weeks they had been together she had, she said, learnt to value their company as well as the protection they afforded her. She had gossiped with Adeliza, marvelled and laughed at her father’s tricks and songs, had been moved to tears by Alain’s skill with the harp, and learnt much wisdom in scholarly discourse with Quint. The fact that she valued none of them more than a straw if it had come to a fight or attack by brigands or an assault from one of her fellow travellers, had not worried her at all - the presence of Walt, one-armed though he was, had reassured her for in his bearing and, above all, in his eyes she could sense the presence of a man who set so little value on his own life he would freely give it to save another’s.
He was, however, and she had to say it hurtful though it was, one of the dourest, saddest, most miserable old sods she had ever come across - and now, on the eve of their separation, she wondered why. Quint explained that Walt was a survivor of the innermost band of companions who had served and, for the most part, died for Harold, King of England.
The tale was already the stuff of legend and romance, though much of it reflecting badly on the Englishman who was, such was the cunning of William’s campaign of propaganda, already renowned as a simpleton, a barbarian, an oath-breaker, and so on. Walt over-hearing this, declared Harold was the best man, save Our Lord, who ever lived.
‘In that case,’ said Junipera, ‘prove the Norman’s histories wrong.’
Junipera’s servants, who were all women, had cleared away the crustacean’s empty carapace, the bones of a peacock, the femur of a ham cured in the mountain air, the stones of apricots crystallized in sugar, and the rinds of cheeses made from the milk of lizards. They had drunk a flagon or two each of the country’s purple wine, watched and applauded the ever more sensuous undulations of Adeliza’s dance in which her round but still small breasts, her navel and her thighs each seemed to have a mind to go their own way to the rhythm of Alain’s harp-playing ... all this, and yet still the last of the sun glowed with opalescent sheen upon the sea beyond the harbour. Clearly it was not yet time for bed.
Taillefer, recalling that it must now be some forty days since he was crucified in Nicaea, and therefore time he completed his programme, briefly amused them by levitating to the height of a tall palm tree on the terrace before his daughter begged him to come down. Jesus, she insisted, had had a smoke-screen laid on to receive His Ascension and since the sky that evening was cloudless and empty apart from swallows twittering in the eaves before making their last dash for Africa, her father had done well enough.
But still the Englishman kept mum, and his face became suffused with a redness that went well beyond that of his now very healthy-looking stump.
It was not, he insisted, a story for an evening of such exquisite and refined pleasures as they had enjoyed but one of horror, blood, pain, destruction, betrayal and tragedy.
Cunningly Quint took him up on this.
‘Betrayal? Yes, indeed,’ he cried. ‘And tragedy, too. That a whole country should be betrayed to bondage and slavery for a thousand years at the ambitious whim of one brother, and the incompetent generalship of another . . .’
Walt spluttered in his wine and reached for a k
nife.
‘King Harold,’ he thundered, ‘was the greatest general who ever lived -- outshone all your Alexanders and Alp Arslans, I can tell, and you had better swallow what you have just said, or swallow this blade. ‘
Quint rose quickly and stood behind Taillefer s chair thinking if need be the mountebank would raise him up beyond the mad Englishman’s reach. At all events, he felt safe enough to go on, with a taunting note in his voice and the red tip of his nose glowing.
‘A general? Did he not fight this battle as if it were some barbaric scrap fought between shaggy saga-louts behind shield-walls? Did he manoeuvre? Did he do anything but wait upon the side of a hill until he had been chopped to pieces? Was not his greatest mistake simply to look up at the cloud-covered sky and say “I see no arrows” . . .’
He had gone too far and Walt, hurling himself across the table, was on him, battering his face with the side of his stump and slashing wildly with the knife which being silver and having no edge or point, did little harm. Alain, Taillefer, Junipera herself and numerous maid-servants eventually subdued him and got him back to his place.
‘At least,’ he gasped at last, when his breath was back and the servants had cleared up the mess he had caused, ‘that bastard renegade monk could say he’s sorry.’
‘Tell us the truth of it, then, if my version is as wrong as you say, and if I believe you, I’ll apologise.’
There was a long silence while all looked at their plates, or at the frescoes, some of which were rather rude and others devotional. Adeliza fondled a short-haired, smoky-grey cat which Junipera said had come from Ethiopia, the land of the Queen of Sheba. Taillefer cleared his throat.
The Last English King Page 29
