Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  In spite of the cold the brightness seemed to cheer everyone, not just us, but the soldiers, the bowmen, the other travellers and the servants in the inn. All bustled about slapping their sides to keep warm, shouting and even singing at each other, though some quietened down a little when a small girl, not more than three years old, was found in a corner of a barn where she had gone in the night to piss and had frozen to death once away from the animals and her parents, who had been drank.

  We breakfasted off the foul bread and milk warm from the udder, though the bowmen pushed slabs of ground-up but barely cooked beef between pieces of bread and drank ale, and we were on the road again within an hour of the sun being fully above the horizon. At first it seemed easier than the day before because, with the frost, all the moisture in the soil hail frozen so one no longer had to wade and paddle through mud. However, it was all churned up into clods as hard as rocks and unless one kept one's eye firmly on where one was putting one's feet one might twist an ankle in an ugly fall. And then, of course, where there had been large pools or puddles there was now sheeted ice, cloudy like watered milk, and more slippery even than the most highly polished marble or basalt, even when wet.

  Nevertheless, we got along and soon the walls of Calais took shape in front of us, a long, curving line of battlements marked off in sections by rounded towers. Much of the stone they were built from was pale, almost white, and gleamed in the sun that was now behind us but much of it too, especially near the top, was blackened with soot. Indeed, the whole city lay beneath a pall of black, greasy smoke for in winter they burn coal, a black rock of which there are many outcrops in the area, and which glows brightly and gives off great heat. However it also gives off a foul black smoke, sulphurous in smell and noxious too: apparently every year a great many people who huddle too close to their fires in winter or have chimneys that do not draw properly are asphyxiated by it. They fall asleep, then into a coma and die.

  We were, of course, challenged at the gate, which was not hinged but suspended above the mad on hemp hawsers and lowered or raised by winches mounted high in the walls above. It is made out of a grid of heavy studded timbers leaving square gaps through which the defenders can see and shoot arrows at hostile visitors. It is called a portcullis, and since the principle of it might be useful to us. I have had it sketched.

  Clearly we were neither Franks nor from Somerset's lngerlonders, which was the first concern of the captain in charge of the gate, and we soon persuaded him by showing some of our wares and the safe-conducts provided by potentates whose land we had crossed before entering Francia, that we were indeed what we said we were: merchants from the Orient. The colour of our skin bore witness to this for the captain, a knight, claimed his father had fought Moors and Turks in the eastern Mediterranean and had told him the men and women in those parts often had skin as dark as ours.

  This led to a raucous discussion in their barbarous tongue, which Ali later told us turned on whether or not we were Mussulmen and therefore infidels and pagans. On our behalf he told these Ingerlonders that we were no such thing but had come from lands even further to the east than those occupied by the Musselmen and that one of the things we hoped to take back with us, along with the goods we traded, was the title religion of Christ the Saviour, and that anyway we were enemies of the Musselmen who hail been trying to conquer our country for seven hundred years.

  The upshot was that after an hour or so, during which darkness began to steal slowly over the scene instead of falling quickly as it does in our country, we were told that we were free to find lodgings for the night in the town, and that we must present ourselves to the Earl of Warwick early the next day, or if not Warwick himself then some officer empowered by him to issue us with the necessary passports and permits. At last we entered the town.

  The trouble with Calais is that it is too small for what it contains. The problem is wool. Wool is what the Ingerlonder economy depends on and the kings have made it a law that no wool should be traded abroad except through Calais. Of course, a trade so large attracts much commerce in other goods, and industries, too. so the small semi-circle, which if the streets were not so crowded one could walk across in less than fifteen minutes, is packed with wire-houses, counting-houses, and then, of course, housing for all employed here: ships' chandlers, ropemakers, sailmakers, ship-repairers and ship-builders, smiths and a hundred and one related trades.

  The streets are narrow and dark for the second and third storeys of the buildings overhang each other and almost meet at the top so one can stretch a hand from one house to touch the hand of whoever lives on the other side. They are filthy too. You cannot begin to imagine how filthy. Every street is a midden and it is no rarity to see an alley completely blocked off by a heap as high as six feet of shit, kitchen refuse, broken furniture, old bricks where a house has fallen down… whatever.

  Ali took us to the inn where he had been staying when the mysterious sadhu gave him the parchments from my brother Jehani but I took one look at it and said, 'No!' On our way here we have stayed in some pretty disgusting places as well as palaces, but this was beyond me. I took a second look and struggled not to vomit as the landlord's bitch, a giant mangy hound, shat copiously a foot from where I was standing. I then told Ali that, cost what it might, I wanted lodgings that were warm and clean and it was up to him to find them. Meanwhile, we took ourselves off to the main square and stationed ourselves round a stone cross that marked its centre, averting our eyes from a gibbet where the thirty-two quarters of eight dismembered criminals had been hung to rot. This, I must suppose, was where Ali's sadhu was burnt alive.

  It was dark now but the square was lit by flambeaux made of smoky pitch, which I could see were not likely to last more than an hour. Presently it began to snow. The flambeaux hissed and spluttered and three or four were extinguished. There were, however, many sounds of revelry, raucous music, shouting and singing, and many windows overlooking the square were lit. I surmised that possibly some festival was in progress, and in this, as you will shortly learn, I was right.

  I had almost given up on Ali, suspecting that he had been waylaid and murdered by footpads and was reckoning that in the morning the populace would awake to find us frozen statues, when at last he reappeared, swinging himself along on his thin white pole.

  'Prince,' he cried, 'we are in luck. I have persuaded the chamberlain of no less a person than the Earl of Warwick himself to welcome us into his hall where there is a feast already started, food, shelter, warmth and entertainment,'

  Well, we all pulled ourselves together, shrugged the snow off our cloaks and stamped our feet. The muleteers stirred our draught animals awake, our fakir came out of his trance, and the Buddhist jingled his finger cymbals and started his monotonous chant.

  'In fact,' Ali went on, as we began to make our way up a slight incline, 'we are expected. There have even been men out looking for us.'

  'How should this be?'

  'Tonight is a special feast. It is called Twelfth Night because it falls twelve nights after the birth of Jesus, whom they call God. It seems that on this night three kings from the Ear East, from India perhaps, came to his birthplace with special gifts. Now. The captain at the gate, who let us in. apparently reported our arrival to the nobles here and likened us to the three kings, both on account of the darkness of our skins and the wealth we appeared to have with us, whereupon Warwick gave orders that we should be found and brought to the hall. And, of course, when I arrived pleading for shelter I was recognised by the captain of the gate as one of the party he had been describing…'

  Already we were beneath the walls of the keep or central fortress of the city, close to two of the large temples or churches. The guards let us pass beneath a portcullis, like the one in the city walls, and ushered us into an anteroom or guardroom while they advised our hosts of our arrival. There was a fire and rush-lights, and already things looked better than they had. We could hear music, played on squealing pipes with banging drums, coming acr
oss a small courtyard from a hall with high, narrow windows that glowed with the lights within.

  Ali went on, 'These three kings.' he said, 'were called Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, and I think it would please them if we represented them as best we can. You, Prince should be Caspar because he came first, I can play Melchior. and Anish should be Balthazar, since he is always represented as a blackamoor and of the three of us Anish's colouring is the darkest.'

  Anish was annoyed by this, he does not like to be reminded of his Tamil ancestry, but there was no denying what Ali had said so I told Anish to be quiet and to do as he was told. Ali concluded, 'The gifts they brought were gold, incense and myrrh. We use bdellium from our medicine chest for myrrh, the aroma is similar, and I think we can provide all three. And I shall need something a little richer than my usual garments if I am to be a king…'

  He never ceases to surprise me. our Ali. for now he bustled about like a child with a new game to play, getting us into our best clothes with gold chains and so forth, pulling my second-best robe on over his usual turban and cape, neither of which he divested himself of and generally getting us lined up and ready, me with a small gold goblet encrusted with diamonds and rubies, with elephants carved round the rim – I expect you remember it. a nice enough trinket and not at all special – he with a handful of incense sticks, and Anish with a silver box containing a small slab of bdellium, which we had brought with us as a prophylactic against stomach cramps.

  Chapter Fifteen

  First, let me describe the hall. It was quite large, perhaps as much as fifty good paces long and twenty wide, with a high, pitched roof supported on hammer-beams and corbels. We entered at one end through large double doors (hardwood of the sort they call oak which they use for all timber work where strength is required, though it is nothing like as hard or strong as the woods we use), and were confronted at the other end by a raised dais on which the chief nobles sat, facing the main body of the hall.

  This was filled by two long parallel tables at which sat forty or more squires and knights, lesser gentry. In the middle of the wall to our left there was a huge fireplace in which numerous logs were blazing, enough to warm the whole room; on the other side, facing the fire, were doors smaller than the one by which we had entered, which we soon discovered gave access to and from a large kitchen. The whole place was lit with many candles, some fixed to cast-iron wheels suspended horizontally from the ceiling, others in fixtures attached to the walls; nevertheless, the higher beams supporting the roof and the corners remained shadowy and in darkness, a gloom exacerbated by the fact that the place was decorated with branches of evergreens called ivy and holly.

  As the night wore on many of the candles died a guttering smoky death, and by midnight almost the only light came from the great fire. However, this did not prevent the carousing and horseplay continuing almost to dawn.

  Above us, as we entered, there was an overhanging gallery filled with… I was going to say musicians, but it was scarcely music they produced from their instruments. These were made from brass as trumpets, hunting horns and sackbuts, wood as flutes and a pipe called the hautboy with a reed, which made a nasty squealing noise, and untuned drums, which either gave oft a booming bang or a fierce, grating rattle. Some of the pipes had bladders attached with a second pipe sticking out of them. The bladder was filled with the breath of the piper who then squeezed it forcing air through this second pipe to make a long, monotonous drone.

  These musicians welcomed us with a fanfare, and as we walked down the aisle between the two tables all the men stood up and cheered, banging their horn-handled knives on their pewter plates or on the table. Somewhat bemused but sensing that the atmosphere and intentions of all were friendly, I led our procession on towards the dais with as much composure as I could muster and found myself faced with a living picture which I recognised from paintings, stained-glass windows and the like, which we had seen on our way from Venice. It was a presentation, indeed a travesty, of the group they call the holy family – Mary, the mother of Jesus, Joseph, his father, and the newborn Jesus himself, to whom we were to present our gifts.

  A travesty indeed. Have I said there were no women at all in this hall? Such was the case, though now I believed for a moment that I was wrong. For, though the figure that portrayed the mother of Jesus was six feet tall and exceedingly well built, he was also dressed in a blue robe with a cowl round whose edge he peeked coyly. Moreover, his fair skin beneath the one lock of auburn hair we could see was smooth and fine, his eyes large, wide and intensely blue: his mouth was painted like a harlot's. Once I realised that this was a man dressed as a woman I could see how two other factors had made the deception momentarily successful: he was young, only seventeen years old, and handsome in a light, winsome way. Behind him stood 'Joseph', an older man, in his thirties, heavily built, strong-looking, and dark in hair, though rubicund in skin colour, but wearing when we first saw him a heavy beard and wig hastily improvised from bits of sheepskin worn woollen side out, with a coarse cloak requisitioned from one of his servants.

  Most disturbing of all was the infant Jesus, or rather the creature that stood in for him, carried in the arms of the 'mother'. This was nothing more nor less than a sucking pig, alive, but not struggling, quite content to lie on its back in the crook of the 'mother's' arm, gazing up into the face above it, with every indication of content, save that its snout wrinkled and quested… perhaps for milk?

  The hall now fell silent and I did not need the whispered prompting of Ali to treat the show with some seriousness. I approached the group, knelt at the booted feet of the Mary, with the humblest obeisance I could muster, and placed the goblet on the floor. Ali and Anish did likewise, and then, as Anish heaved himself to his feet (for all the privations we have suffered he is no thinner), the whole hall burst into an uproar of laughter and cheers. Possibly this frightened the piglet, which now wriggled convulsively and urinated on 'Mary's' lap. The young man playing the part launched himself to his feet with a bellow, set the piglet scurrying across the floor, aimed a kick at it, which missed. 'Damned creature,' he cried. 'Wasn't he meant to be in swaddling clothes?'

  The two men then threw off their borrowed robes and led us to sit at their high table beside them.

  'Joseph' acted as host as, indeed, was right since this was Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick and Captain of Calais (pray do not confuse him with the captain of the guard). He is, and he made sure we knew it, a man of great wealth and power, owning great estates throughout the kingdom of Ingerlond through his marriage to a lady who had brought with her dowry the title he bore. He himself is the son and heir of the Earl of Salisbury, an old man, once a great warrior, who also sat at the table. Neville, then and since, showed a certain arrogance in his behaviour, a wilfulness, an unpredictability that we soon learnt was a general characteristic of all the Ingerlonder nobility, though exaggerated in him. His pride was not without justification. We soon learnt that he had distinguished himself militarily, especially at sea, clearing the channel that lies between Ingerlond and Francia of pirates, though he was known to be both impetuous and indecisive as a general on dry land.

  The other younger man was introduced to us simply as March. Or Eddie. Eddie March. I understand him to be a person of some consequence, but not a lot, owing his position in the company to his prowess, his good looks and the friendship of Warwick, rather than to any claim to greatness he might have through blood or inherited lands.

  Incidentally, and in this as in so much else I am indebted to Ali for tutoring me, the Ingerlonders set enormous store by wealth and parentage, and little to talent or merit. But that is by the way.

  Now the charade was over the feasting began. The food was, again, disgusting. There were huge amounts of beef and mutton, too, hacked from a whole sheep that was spitted above the fire. There was a centrepiece of a swan stuffed with a peacock, stuffed with a cockerel, stuffed with larks; many vegetables of the sort we feed only to animals, such as cabbage and vario
us roots; mountains of bread, made from wheat and just about edible, butter, cream and hard, strong cheeses. But there were also preserved or dried fruits, some from warmer lands, such as dates and figs, and nuts, almonds and cobs.

  But worst of all was the amount of strong drink, a never-ending supply of ales and wines brought to the table in large ewers by serving-boys, which, of course, soon took their effect. I earlier used the word 'horseplay', which may have puzzled you, but I used it advisedly for it describes accurately a particular sort of foolery almost all now gave themselves up to. When the tables were cleared of most of the feast's debris apart from the goblets and ewers, the younger, lighter men climbed on to the backs of the heavier larger ones who gripped their riders' knees in the crooks of their elbows and carried them in combat against the others, the aim being to 'unhorse' the riders, or bring both riders and mounts crashing to the floor. To this end they used whatever they could find as weapons except real ones. Cushions and pillows were brought into play, ladles and big spoons, even empty and not so empty-jugs and big drinking vessels they call tankards, made out of pewter.

  Soon there was blood everywhere, and broken furniture and tableware but no serious injuries that I could see. Once a couple fell or were beaten to the ground they retired to the sides, where they continued to contribute to the noise, if nothing else, by cheering on the survivors. The result was that there was more noise when only two couples were left than there had been at the outset. One pair was made up of Richard Neville with Eddie March on his back, and the other by an old man called William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, riding a younger knight (though still in his forties, I would guess) called John Dynham. Fauconberg, we later learnt, was Warwick's uncle. Until now I had thought the survival of Richard Neville and March was due to Neville's seniority as Earl of Warwick and Captain of Calais and that none durst overturn him, but I was wrong. His uncle, who had a grizzled beard and shoulders as broad as an ox's, managed to get his foot between those of his nephew and with one hard push had him over. Yet it was not just brute force that tumbled him but cunning too, for Fauconberg had seen an upturned chair behind Warwick and that was enough to provide the leverage to trip him.