Angels in the Architecture

by Sue Fitzmaurice

  Bishop Hugh’s carriage wound its way through wandering peasant folk and townspeople at the edge of Lincoln, those who recognised him doffing their hats or bowing a little as they scurried about their way. Hugh scanned the horizon of the city’s walls and the structures rising up the hill of Lincoln. From this vantage point, he knew he should have seen the Cathedral, but as with the whole of his dusty journey across the vast flatness of Lincolnshire towards the hilltop town, there was no sight at all of its roof or towers.

  The Cathedral had stood for much of the last hundred years and was the first cathedral ordered built by William the Conqueror. It had cost a fortune then, as well as a generation of labour, and would do more than that again now.

  Still, Hugh looked out hopefully for some vestige of the great church and put thoughts of cost and sacrifice out of his head.

  He wondered what the mood of the townsfolk might be. He couldn’t tell, but he recalled the stories conveyed to him by the vicar of Torksey and the priest’s fears about a rising tension. Things seemed usual within the city, albeit that there seemed more people about than was usual. But he wondered at the precariousness of it. For the most part the people were inherently superstitious and Hugh knew the collapse of a church would have tongues wagging. Few would have considered the likelihood of an engineering weakness or the age or height of the building, or just the sheer power of the earthquake. Hugh himself was determined to understand all he could in this respect, for he would have it that the new cathedral would not topple with such ease in the future, and he knew also he must maintain a calm and kindly exterior, one that would lead people away from superstition. He also knew what a challenge that path would be. For as long as people had believed anything at all, he knew they’d believed what they chose to, even in the face of stupendous evidence to the contrary. Subtlety and Faith would have to come together for the sake of peace.

  The Bishop was settled back into his seat as he was conveyed through the city wall at the river gate and up the cobbled hill road to the crest. Once through the wall, he knew by now he certainly should have seen the cathedral rising proudly above all the surrounding structures, but he deigned instead not to look out and up. Already there were the signs of rebuilding as men carried all manner of tools and materials up the hill. Most seemed very young – boys even – and Hugh knew their labours were missed by their families already, all of whom would be poor. No family that was not peasant would feel cause to satisfy the Church’s call for so many, and such others as these would contribute anyway, in materials or fine adornment for the new building or its deaconry, whether from obligation, or to assuage guilt, or to make evident their affluence or position. For some it would earn their own pew or burial within the Church; the poor would wait longer for their reward.

  Nearing the top of the hill, Hugh’s eyes followed a young boy, of thirteen years or so, who pushed a small flat-topped handcart along the side of the road. Hugh’s own vehicle was slow as it wended its way up and through the streets of people and animals and carts, so he remained apace with the boy, who seemed singularly set on his task and apparently had no mind to the buggy beside him or the clergyman’s attention to him.

  The boy’s clothes, although worn and old, were carefully stitched in many places, demonstrating some mother’s proud attention to her own handiwork and thrift and possibly to some idea of what was decent or respectable. He was fair-haired and might one day be handsome. Hugh surmised the lad would have had little notion of God’s intention for him or his kin, knowing nought but work and his place in the world..

  He gazed at the boy as both wended their way across the square atop the hill. Something caught the boy’s attention and he stopped and turned to a voice calling him from across the road. As he turned he caught the Bishop’s face peering at him and puzzled at it momentarily before halting his small cart and remembering to drop his head deferentially and doff his non-existent cap. With the mass of workmen and equipment at the front of them the Bishop’s carriage came to a halt and so the boy and the Bishop were left before each other, both briefly lost to the call of the wider scene and their role in it.

  ‘Thurstan!’ came a shout a way away. ‘Ger’over ’ere, ya ijit!’

  The boy raised his head to the shout.

  ‘Arm comin’, Dem,’ he called back.

  Hugh watched the boy veer his small cart away hurriedly to meet up with a bigger boy across the road, continuing then alongside the older boy.

  Clearly his brother, judging from their likeness. Or perhaps cousins. Two boys from one family. They are some mother’s sons.

  The boys headed beneath the Exchequer Gate, disappearing from view amid the larger throng of workers, mostly young men like themselves.

  Hugh alighted from his carriage and thanked his coachman. With the young priest Peter in step behind him, he weaved through the crowds of workmen and others, most of them clearing a way and kneeling briefly as he filed past.

  Hugh noticed around the square a number of women begging, some with small children. There were always some of these, but today there were more, and most seemed afraid. Other folk about, who were not obviously workmen, sold bread and other provisions from baskets or the back of carts. Some were giving away some of their loaves to those begging.

  On one side a queue of men lined up, and at the front of the line was another man wearing the leather apron of a master mason, vetting them as to their skill and experience. Most would be accepted he knew, for now. Hugh picked out the different occupations of the workers by their clothes, their tools, whether they worked alone or were consulting in small groups over drawings or samples of stone or metal. There was great industry afoot and far from feeling it as a sacrifice just yet, in fact Hugh could see from their faces that most of its participants were pleased to be engaged in a pursuit greater than themselves, and the youth among them on an adventure whose grand design mattered not. Not so much for God or Church did they labour, but because the edifice that would be this great new cathedral would stand for their labours for most likely hundreds of years, and indeed for a man to work in the creation of something so fine was a testimony to his prowess and skill, and this sat well with the good in many a man. Not to mention that the Cathedral was a symbol of the community’s strength and resilience, and that also sat well.

  Hugh felt his own dire mood lift as the buzz of the industry infected him and he found himself enthusiastic now for an ache in his shoulders that would prove a day’s strong work, just as these many others about him would achieve. His mind was filled with facts of engineering and construction, of architecture and style, and he knew they would whirl in his head from the dawn of each day and again even as he tried to sleep at night. He would return each day to this scene for more of the consumption of hard work and its influence on his soul.

  Hugh rejoiced in the ordered flurry of the scene. As people about him kneeled, greeted him, offered a blessing towards him, or even reached to touch the hem of his purple cassock as he walked past, Hugh prayed to God he would have the resolve to shepherd this great city and all that lay within and without its walls, in the direction of God’s purpose.

  Walking beneath the arch, Hugh saw beyond the throng, the sight that he’d briefly been distracted from and into which his eyes were now immersed.

  One part of one front tower was the only substantially remaining part of the church, and it jutted obstinately up amid a great mass of rubble, around which circled an army of coordinated activity. The scene before him though did not shock or upset him. Whereas Hugh had experienced dread in anticipation of this scene, he now renewed a hope, alongside the tenacity and steadfastness of the Church propelling itself into the future, as this one remaining spire contrived to prove its own invincibility.

  We will prevail.

  As he neared the cathedral, one of the architects who had been at the Bishop’s residence in Stowe a day earlier stepped up to him..

  ‘Your Grace.’ The man knelt and kissed the Bishop’s ring.

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nbsp; ‘Master Goodman, my Lord,’ Peter whispered into the Bishop’s ear.

  ‘Ah, Master Goodman. What a great hive of work you have afoot!’

  ‘Aye, m’Lord. There’s not a man here has taken his load lightly, sir. There’s much to be done, as you know, sir.’

  ‘Indeed. I am encouraged, Master Goodman. I want to know everything. Everything. How long until the rubble is cleared for a start?’

  ‘I’s not just a matter of clearing, m’Lord. There’s a lot of sorting to be done.’ The architect pointed to the largest pile of rubble and to men heaving stones aside. ‘Much of the stone can be reused and each stone that’s fallen is checked for how suitable it’d be and for what. Some look right, but they’ve cracks and can’t be used as they were before. Some can be made into smaller stones. Th’rest is kept aside and poured into the new foundations. Nothing’s wasted, sir. Not if we can help it – expensive business building a cathedral, sir.’

  ‘Oh, my word, don’t I know it. Then I’m very, very pleased, Master Goodman. For you understand one of our greatest trials in this regard.’

  ‘Your Grace,’ Peter sought a break in this exchange. ‘May I suggest you seek some refreshment before your day takes you any further; it’s been a long journey.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, Peter, but I will take something to aid my strength for this labour, if that is what you mean.’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Goodman.’ Hugh looked about him again. ‘I will return very soon, and I will want you to guide me through the cathedral.’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace, although we will need to be most careful, sir, as there are still stones toppling sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, I’m confident Our Lord will protect me.’

  ‘Very good, sir. Then it will be my privilege, Your Grace.’

  ‘It is all our privilege, Mr Goodman, to serve this great Cause.’ Hugh looked up to the remaining spire.

  ‘It is certainly that, sir,’ the architect rejoined, following the Bishop’s line of sight.

  Hugh smiled and nodded at the man and his colleagues and allowed his young caretaker to lead him back through the arch to the temporary quarters that had been established for him at the Castle. Peter knew the Bishop would work himself literally to the bone should he be left to do so, and the young priest knew his own task, to ensure the well-being of his master, was as good as any mission in the cause of God and the Church..

  The architects returned to their plans, and men around about who had seen the Bishop step into their enterprise, and others who knew who this man must be were able to tell those who had no clue to his identity, so that in a short time he was known to every man and boy awork at the site..

  Geoffrey Warriner heard this news as he saw his brothers walking towards him.

  ‘’Ere, see tha’ man in’t purple thar – tha’s Bishop, Bishop Hugh they say. Come t’see you two’s doin’ yer work roight, so be doin’ it proper won’ ya, eh?’

  ‘’E looked a’ me, ’e did. Loik ’e knew me ‘n’all,’ said Thurstan.

  ‘Ya fool. ‘E don’ know yer from a worm.’

  ‘Well, ‘e looked a’ me jus’ same.’

  ‘’E’s a great man, ’e is. Go’ no toim for loiks a you, ya’ gi’.’ Geoffrey Warriner laughed at his younger brother. ‘Come on. Ge’ this lo’ loaded up. Go’ plenty more ‘a this lo’ t’shift before we eat today.’

  ‘Aye, y’worm!’ Dem laughed at his younger brother.

  ‘Ger’ off!’ Thurstan punched him back defiantly.

  Alice Warriner was cleaning the soil from Thomas. He lay uncomplaining on his side, and she looked at the same time to the back of his head where she could see a scab forming already over the gash. She hadn’t believed her husband’s and son’s and Bennet Williams’s story about Thomas’s injury, although she had no inkling to what really had caused it. She wondered perhaps her husband had become angry and done it himself, but she had never known him to such violence, and she thought he would not do so even now when he was roused to such a choler with the taking of his sons.

  Thomas seemed now to pay his wound no mind, although did she see some particular quiet in him this last day? Was he simply hurt, or was he frightened, perhaps untrusting now in the limited understanding he had of the world he was in. Alice felt torn in keeping him to the inside of their home, and giving him air to breathe and different faces and activity to see, which she felt gave him some small abundance. There was hardly any need to think of such things amid the vast array of her work, but she still saw her very first duty to Thomas, a duty she knew no one else would ever adopt.

  After she’d finished cleaning him she lifted him into his small pen and he sat quietly there, not watching her. Alice though watched him as she went about other tasks, from time to time drawing close to study how she thought he might be. Her husband and other sons had gone to the fields with some of the men from the hamlet to examine their flocks and had taken tools to shear and pick at animals in whatever ways they did. She would be alone most of the day, and now with so many fewer in their household this was an unimagined state of things, and Alice found the quiet an uncertain tranquillity. This made her tasks on the one hand easier for her; but on the other hand she found an unusual intrusion in her mind that let her feel the possibility of not completing one or two of her tasks, like an idleness had crept into her thoughts to suggest some new indulgence that her life could be other than a peasant farmer’s wife and that there was something more she could have that would fill her up and make her a different person. She felt this as though it were something promising in the world – some new force of God’s nature that she’d not known before, but it pulled against a lifetime of knowing her place and committing to the days’ long labours. Into this seeming vacuum was sucked a vision of a light-filled destiny that found some form, and even words in her head, and Alice was happy to see her family leave each day so she had room to breathe in more of this picture. While she was careful not to yield to this intellectual extravagance too much, it became the case that there was a little more dust to her house, and a little less care to her food, and a little more grubbiness to the cloth of her family’s vests and smocks, but she knew none other than an observant wife such as herself would ever spy such a difference, and so she worried less about this. Nor did she worry, in reality, that God had anything other than a peasant’s drudgery and grief for her; and though she had long ago given up believing that beauty was of the devil, she still held to hard work as a reasonable path to His grace. She wondered though that God could put such thoughts in her head if they were not to be had, and she hoped He might offer some sign of his intention that she could perceive from her lowly vantage point.

  As if she could possibly see this best in the open air, Alice stepped through the low door of her house and out on to the hard ground that was her front yard. As she did so, riding into her view was the perplexing sight of one whose arrival might otherwise herald more grief to her small family. She espied the pompous set and stride of Father Taylor upon his horse pulling up in front of her and she had enough thought to display the right deference to the priest as he clearly intended to dismount before her.

  For Father Taylor’s part, he had seen this woman he knew as the mother of the idiot boy who had only the day before been so unfortunately struck down in the village, but he saw her as no different from any other crude peasant, domiciled as she was in a tiny and squalid hut at the edge of the forest. He noted her proper courtesy to him and wondered what sense he would get from one of such limited capacity and reason, especially a woman.

  ‘Good day, madam,’ he called, dismounting and leading his horse to a tying post.

  ‘Good day, Father,’ Alice replied, waiting anxiously for whatever it was he’d arrived for.

  Father Taylor stood and contemplated the woman.

  ‘I’ve come to see how the young boy is. I was concerned at the incident yesterday and I feel it requires some investigation on my part. Do you
understand?’

  ‘My son is resting, sir. He seems mostly his usual self, I believe.’

  Father Taylor realised he’d never heard this woman speak before and was surprised at some intelligence in her voice, although he thought perhaps it was just that she was not so rasping or crude as many. She would certainly be as ignorant as any other.

  ‘Good. Good,’ he continued slowly. ‘There was some disquiet as to the manner of his injury. Apparently, there is no culprit to explain this unfortunate accident yet, but I will make it my business to find one. I don’t wish to see these kinds of disturbances in the village. Things being as they are.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ Alice wondered anew at the veracity of her husband’s claims as to Thomas’s accident.

  ‘Did the boy himself speak of anything, madam?’

  ‘He does not speak, sir.’

  ‘No, of course. I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure the extent of his … affliction. Has he always been like this?’

  ‘He seemed as usual a boy as any when he was born, sir. But he didn’t grow up as the others did,’ Alice replied. ‘I had six before him, you see. All boys they were.’

  ‘Were?’

  ‘Three have gone to the Cathedral, Father.’

  ‘Three? Oh yes. Of course. Well, with so many … And it’s a great task they commit for the Church of course.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘He’s gone to the fields today, sir, with the other boys.’