Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  "Uncle Alan," he cries, 'Grandpa Bert has broke the chain on his harrow and none of us will get our fields broken up for sowing if you don't come now."

  Then the little girl is at my side. 'Uncle David, if you don't come now. Uncle Alan will never get his forge up to heat "cause the bellows has a hole in it."

  I look at them both, first Alan then David.

  'So. You are the village smith. And you are the bellows mender. A long goodbye to both of you.'

  And humming a little hymn to the goddess I pass on my way over the crest of the hill and down the other sale.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  In Banbury marketplace there is a fair for carnival. An ox is being roasted whole, which, of course, disgusts me, but there is plenty to please the senses too: apples on sticks, dipped in honey and roasted, cubed pork or lamb sizzling on skewers over gridirons, pastry cakes filled with raisins, a local treat, hot spiced wine, nick-nacks and gew-gaws known as fairings are all for sale. And there are sideshows too: jugglers, fire-eaters, tightrope walkers. There are contests of strength, and contests which involve rolling big wooden balls down a long plank to knock over nine club-shaped skittles. And, above all, there is a carnival procession led by a girl of lovely beauty riding on a white horse. She has pale white skin and long yellow hair, and she is wearing a green dress. She has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes and she is followed by a band with the usual pipes, bagpipes and drums. Do the people of Banbury know who she really is, this Carnival Queen? Maybe, but they'll only whisper it.

  Best of all. well, best after Her Ladyship, there's a shadow puppet theatre, best because it reminds me of home where such entertainments are common. There's a two-wheeled cart with a very old horse still between the shafts, munching in a nosebag. The tail-gate has been dropped and there's a white cotton or silk screen stretched in a frame just behind it. Then there's a gap in the planks of the door and up through it. from underneath, and hidden by drapes that brush the cobbles, the puppeteers thrust the two-dimensional dolls and manipulate their limbs and heads in front of a tented bank of oil-lamps and candles. None of it works too well at midday when I arrive, but later as the sky fills with purple clouds and the sun falls behind the big new church and a few flakes of snow drift across the marketplace, it looks better, a little cave of light and pleasure.

  There is a notice painted in red and yellow lettering on a semi-circle of wood above the screen: Geoff Reeve and Family, Shadow Puppets for your Edification and Education, as seen by the Crowned Heads of Europe.

  They are enacting a miracle performed by the Mother of God on the pilgrims' road to Santiago. My initial fascination wears off and I wander through the crowd, sampling some honeyed barley-cakes, which I filch. I hear a cheer from the crowd round the shadow puppets and wander back.

  There's another notice up now as well as the first: it reads 'The Last Inglysshe King'. This looks more interesting. I take my place in the crowd next to a peasant who is eating roasted barley, puffed up by a brazier's heat.

  A warrior, clearly the hero because he is taller than all the other characters, swears an oath of fealty to a duke. The crowd boos. He has been tricked into it, they shout. An old king with a crown and a beard dies in his bed. The Warrior Hero takes his crown and the crowd cheers. The Warrior Hero fights a battle against two men in winged helmets and defeats them. The crowd cheers again. Ships rock and sway across the screen. The Duke gets out of one. The crowd boos. A second battle takes place. It lasts a long time. Then an arrow hits the Warrior Hero in the eye and the Duke wades in with his sword, kills him and takes his crown. The crowd boo again, but more soberly. Some turn away and I see that one or two look sad indeed.

  The show ends with a comedy. It involves an old man with a young wife who climbs a pear tree where she is fucked by a young man. There's more to this than meets the eye. The old man is winter, the pear tree is the tree of love, of the goddess, the young man is spring and the wife is the earth, a good choice for a festival on the cusp of winter and spring. Considering the whole show has been no more than a matter of shadows on a screen it has been well done, and fulfilled the promise of instruction combined with pleasure.

  I am about to leave when I hear an irritated sigh from behind me and a smallish man, with thinning grey hair, spectacles and a pleasing, open face, pushes between us, holding a collecting box in one hand and a walking-stick with a crook for a handle in the other. 'Pennies for the puppets,' he says, and my peasant with the inflated barley grain pushes off fast. I put a penny in the box. I picked it, and four more like it, from his purse during the show.

  'Generous,' says the new arrival. 'A farthing would have been ample.'

  'You asked for a penny.'

  'A manner of speaking.' he takes me by the elbow and looks over his shoulder. 'I take it from the way you speak and the darkness of your skin that you are a stranger to these parts, possibly even from some further shore?'

  I nod my concurrence.

  By now the crowd is drifting away from us. Geoff Reeve, for that is clearly who he is, casts a jaundiced eye over the receding backs.

  'I won't get any more out of this lot. Perhaps you'd care for a jar with me?' He ponders a moment. 'At the White Horse, perhaps?'

  He shakes his collecting box and I follow him towards his cart and stage. From behind he has a faintly ecclesiastical look: a bald patch at the back of his head suggests the tonsure, his roped robe a monk's habit. Perhaps he was once in minor orders: certainly his erudition and manner are, I have discovered, rare in Ingerlond outside the Church.

  'Jenny?' he calls. 'Chap here, awfully nice fellow, but a Johnny foreigner, so I'm taking him over to the White Horse for a pint. Join us if you've a mind to.'

  A handsome woman, younger than him and with blonde hair, who is loading small cushions that had been put out for children in front of the screen into the back of the cart, turns and smiles at me.

  'How very nice to meet you,' she says. 'I'll be with you directly.'

  Geoff Reeve shakes some coins out of his collecting box, retains a couple of pennies, and gives the rest to Jenny; then he takes my elbow again and we walk over the cobbled square, past the cross to a tavern called the White Horse, on the side opposite the Fine Lady.

  He is known in the tavern. 'Master Reeve, what can I get you?' A cheery girl has singled him out, and is ready to serve him ahead of customers who have been trying to get her attention.

  'Two pints of mulled winter ale, Bess, in pewter, if you please, and a couple of dozen oysters from the barrel that arrived today. Get Peter to bring it to the fire for us.' And he pushes me in front of him towards the big fireplace with its large inglenook, a bench and a three-legged table. 'At least we'll be warm here. The cold really gets to me, especially in the hip.' And pulling up his robe to reveal his knees he spreads them towards the fire and his hands above them. His spectacles flash with the flames.

  'Where are you from, then?' he asks.

  There seems no reason to lie. 'From Bharatavarsha,' I say, giving the Sanskrit name, 'which you generally call India, I believe.'

  'Really? Now refresh my memory. Which side of Africa is that?'

  'The further side.'

  'Ah. And what brings you to this end of the world?'

  Not an easy question to answer. To say that I am seeking wisdom when I have left the land that is the fount of all wisdom would invite ridicule from this clearly cultivated gentleman. Fortunately we are interrupted by the arrival of our comestibles.

  The oysters are excellent, already opened for us so all we have to do is toss them into our mouths from their glowing nacreous shells, which are thinner and more round than the ones we pick up from the Malabar coast, and more delicately flavoured. The ale-is dark, rich, fruity in flavour, and, perhaps because it is served hot, very quick in its intoxicating action. A small wild apple bobs against the rim.

  'Your show,' I comment, 'was about the Normans. The people who rule you.'

  His glasses flash at me, serious
ly, knowingly. 'Bastards! No, not really. It's about Harold. Good bloke, but unlucky.'

  'The arrow in the eye?'

  'Of course… he loses. And William becomes king and the Normans lake over. Bastards,' he repeats.

  'Are they really so different, the Normans and the rest?'

  He leans towards me and puts his hand on my knee. 'Yes,' he says. 'They've never fitted in, in spite of marrying Danes and Saxons, which they were bound to do since they brought few women of their own with them. Their kings married into the Prankish Angevins, who call themselves Planta-Genet after the branch of broom their founder wore in his helmet…'

  The name stirs up sand from the bottom of my mind, the way a shrimp at the bottom of a rock-pool does, but I couldn't place it. Geoff went on, '… and it's only in the last sixty years after nearly four hundred, that they've even bothered to learn Inglysshe. They're not properly English at all, stiff-necked, proud, formal, obsessed with form, order and rank.'

  I remembered how, at Calais, Warwick and the rest had treated Wydville with contempt because he was no Norman. Geoff went on: 'They are clannish, and they love sports but the more warlike the better. Those who do not have the inclination or the physique go into the Church and are made bishops. But while their relations with each other may be easy they remain arrogant to outsiders.'

  'What about their women?" I ask.

  'Obsessed with their men. They serve them like slaves, marry-as they are told to, bear children as regularly as cows calve, and are even more concerned than the men with status and the trappings of status.'

  'So what are the real Inglysshe like?'

  'There are two sorts, those who collaborated and those who did not. Those who did are servile and obedient, content to do anything for a quiet life so long as they are not starving. You see, the Normans had a problem. They had to recruit clerks, officials, sheriffs, constables, customs officers and the like to run the country. And provided they behaved the Normans were happy to let the Saxons do this work.'

  He sighs, continues, 'These people, these collaborators, developed a finicky sense of neatness, correctness, to please their masters. They accept the Normans as their lords by right and tradition, and will do anything to please them, showing forelock-tugging deference at all times and aping Norman manners. Usually it was the Saxons who collaborated. The Danes are more independent. But both races shared a way of life, before lead-coloured tankard to his lips, gives it a shake. I look round and see the boy who brought us our drink and oysters at my shoulder and I order two more pints. This time I pay for them.

  When he's ready to go on it is in a tone more speculative than before, as if he were thinking through what he had to say for the first time.

  'In the old days both Saxons and Danes governed themselves through village moots or meetings. Even the King was governed by the biggest moot of all, the Witangemot. Ami although most of these privileges were taken away or driven underground the spirit that lay behind them survived.'

  'And imbues the second strand in the Inglysshe?' I guess.

  'Yes, indeed. Under our outer robes of conformity we are fiercely independent, and respect each other's individuality. We can work hard when it suits us, but we'd rather drink, dance, and muck about. And there'd be a lot more of that than there is if our Harold had won that damned battle…' And he sways a little on the bench, wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. 'Merry Ingerlond,' he says. 'That's what we lost.'

  'Geoff. Geoff? Come on, now.' I look up and see his wife Jenny smiling down at us.

  'Hello, my dear.' Geoff sits up with a start, suddenly recovered. 'Just telling this young feller about the Inglysshe and so forth. He's from India. Fascinating place. Perhaps we could knock up a shadow-play based on his experiences… Call it, let me see, Far Flung Places?? Sit down, dear, have a bite and a drink, see what you think.'

  And he gives me a big wink, which I am sure she sees, for she, too, gives me a secret little moue before squeezing in next to him.

  Coventry. Again I keep to the countryside to avoid the dangers of the road, and it takes me a day and a half to get there. I must confess, too, that I had a bad night sleeping in the stabling of that Banbury tavern. I had to share the straw, pretending to be a man amongst several others in the way of ostlers and grooms. I had drunk a gallon of ale by the time the Reeves departed, which had to be disposed of and it was not easy to maintain the pretence while pissing next to a man similarly engaged. And then the oysters. Never eat shellfish unless you can see the sea is a good rule, and always open them yourself It only needs one bad one, and one bad one there must have been. No doubt the heat of the fire and the numbness induced by the ale disguised its presence…

  The result is that I came upon the city at around midday when I might have been there the evening before. The first thing one sees, and that from a considerable distance, is the spire of its cathedral, which soars to a needlepoint out of the smoke and murk that fill the air above the city roofs. Next, and quite clearly seen, since the town is built on a low eminence above the fields and commons around it, is a vast shanty-town outside the city walls. Since London has proved hostile to the royal faction, the King, or rather his Queen, has made this city, in the very centre of the island, her capital and principal seat of government, calling Parliament to meet here, and bringing in the whole apparatus by which the nation is ruled.

  In its train this has brought many thousands of hangers-on, mostly people who have no visible means of support, as out-of-work artisans, entertainers, tinkers, gypsies, prostitutes, unfrocked clerics, unattached professional soldiers, horse-dealers and then the people who would supply this crowd with victuals and drink, especially the strong drink the Inglysshe love so much. Now, in a town the size of London such a crowd can be accommodated, and even employment found for many, but what was a relatively small place of perhaps no more than five thousand souls is swamped, law and order and all the other services break down, and the whole place is enclosed by a human jungle, like a well-formed egg-yolk within a sloppy white.

  First, on the outskirts of this shanty-town, there are enormous, steaming middens with heaps of refuse as well as ordure, both animal and human, and up and down these miniature alps old women and children clamber and slither looking for food, such as cabbage stalks, stale loaves, fish-heads, even egg-shells with a trace of egg-meat still in them, and the last of the meat too, pigs' feet and ears, cows' tails and goats' heads – I say the last for we are now into Lent, forty days when no meat will be eaten.

  Then come the hovels, crowded about with no discernible streets or lanes, except for the main thoroughfares from each of the cardinal points of the compass, which lead to the gates in the city walls, and which, willy-nilly, every visitor must follow. Here, countless beggars use every art and wile to keep body and soul together. Women, holding screaming babies they have hired from baby-dealers, tug at my sleeve with grubby palms outstretched; there are young men in the prime of life with serviceable limbs tied up to look like amputated stumps, which they claim have been lost in the service of the King or even in the French wan, others have sores painted on their faces and some mimic blindness.

  Moving nearer the walls one finds quacks and swindlers selling talismans, pilgrims' medals, amulets and the like guaranteed to give protection against every manner of ill, and street-trading apothecaries offering green dragon's blood, the stones from the heads of poisonous toads, the shrivelled stomachs of sharks, false limbs carved from wood, glass eyes. Others hawk the shrivelled hands and feel of babies said to be the relics of saints, and there is one who claims to have the piss of a witch in a glass vial, which, he says, poured a drop at a time on the nape of a woman's neck will, by its giving off a vapour and a foul stench, reveal her to be a faithless whore.

  All seem to do a good trade but he who does best is a tall lean man with straight yellow hair to his shoulders who sells pardons, signed and sealed by the Pope in Rome. He claims these scraps of parchment will get a man or woman time off from Purgatory, a p
lace apparently sinful souls must go to, to be purged before progressing to the paradise these superstitious people believe in.

  All this, of course, produces a fearful clamour of cries, shouting, screams and singing out, which is like the scraping of slate on slate to my ears, assaulting them just as badly as my vision, sense of smell and touch are lacerated by this wretched throng around me.

  Presently the South date rises above the thatched and tented roofs, flanked by twin towers and with a lowered portcullis. Fixed to its lintel is the usual ghastly array of skulls and half-eaten heads of those who have displeased the authorities. For a moment I pause, nonplussed, since, yes, it is shut and has a detail of maybe ten soldiers armed with swords and crossbows in front of it. But I hardly have time to consider how I should get in when a trumpet sounds, and from behind I hear the thunderous clatter of iron-shod hoofs on cobbles, the rumble of wheels, the crack of whips and jangle of harness and weaponry.

  There is not time or room to get out of the way. What we have is a squad of mounted soldiers, armoured in open helmets, which leave their laces exposed, chain-mail, breastplates, jointed steel casing on their limbs, big swords at their sides, shields attached to their harness, and holding heavy spears. There are perhaps a score, and all riding big horses that sweat beneath their loads but keep up a slow, steady trot, and what makes them take up so much room, so the crowd must press back against the walls of the shanties, some of which cave in bringing down the roofs on the people within, is a big monster of a cannon drawn by a team of mules. A tube made of lengths of cast iron, fused together and bound with brass hoops, followed by a cart filled with stone balls and then another loaded with barrels of gunpowder. It is not as big or grand as the carriage Jagannath is pulled on when he makes his trip from temple to temple in Puri in Orissa, but the effect is similar. However, whereas the pilgrims who are crushed to death beneath Jagannath, which is an avatar for Vishnu, have freely chosen this form of self-immolation, here in Coventry the poor souls who are crushed beneath this monster have not elected this way to die but go screaming to their deaths.