Angels in the Architecture

by Sue Fitzmaurice

  He glanced sharply to the other side of him, seeing if the light was where he was used to seeing it. He wasn’t surprised to see another person standing there to his side, but he was surprised at the sort of person it was, because he looked very like a tree. Thomas stood still and continued to look at the figure that looked like a tree out of the corner of his eyes. This was easier than looking at the figure straight on – when he looked at most things straight on he got so much information about the thing he was looking at that it would confuse him and he would have no idea what he was looking at at all. He wasn’t sure if the figure was a part of his direction, and so he considered that a while, and when he realised that wasn’t any part of the reason he was here, he looked to the front of him again and took a step forward.

  When that step ripped every ounce of certainty from him, his first thought, in that very split second, was that this wasn’t supposed to happen; that some error in the fabric of time itself had undermined the enormous steps he’d taken to get this far, and that more than one tragedy hung on this unexpected turn of events.

  In the next split second, when Thomas felt the jaws of a great beast grab at his leg, he fought at the power of the thing with the totality of his soul. This encumbrance, this obstacle, deterred him from his expedition. Pain was not foreign to him but these fierce teeth wrestled with him like none other. It was only a silent scream that escaped him but its force transformed itself into sound and the noise of a hundred creatures running from their branches and to their burrows masked the size of it.

  Thomas fell to the ground and when he looked to what it was that locked him so tightly he saw a pair of great metal teeth dug deeply and inescapably into him. Blood spewed about the thing, making it shiny and less ugly, mixing with the rusting metal to make a picture of reds and greys that sat uncomfortably within the surrounding greens and browns of the forest.

  Thomas writhed and could not reach the metal trap. And then nothing of him could move at all, as if to stay still it might go away of its own accord. Fear grew out of the pain and screams rang inside his head as bolts of light shot around in his brain behind his eyes, threatening to blind him. He drew his sight to a focus, at a single leaf at the end of a twig above him. He wished for the leaf to help him, and he cried out a sound that didn’t manage to escape from his wide open mouth.

  Thomas forgot why he was in the forest. He forgot his pointed stones. He forgot the light.

  Fear and disappointment enveloped his being, and as they crawled up his arms and legs, up through his body, taking over his head, Thomas’s last sense of anything in the world was that he would fail at something, at which he was supposed to have succeeded, and he reached out, with only a pinprick of light, to some other soul, perhaps a boy like him, to make the journey to the light in his stead.

  Hugh’s carriage bumped him from a dream. He blinked and shook his head. He knew that Henry would not go to Jerusalem, although he would no doubt promise again to do so, leaving the Holy City at risk of Saladin’s overrun. Perhaps the brave son, called Lionheart already, may honour his one father and His Other.

  ‘Peter!’ he called to the young priest asleep opposite him.

  ‘Peter!’

  Peter jerked awake, looking around.

  ‘Peter. We must turn around and go back.’

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘There’s no point, dear boy. None. Just the idle fancy of an old man. I’m tired. Have the coachman turn around.’ Hugh slumped his head back and sighed. He’d been foolish, thinking that some young boy with a light in his eyes would be a missing part to his puzzle – an answer from the heavens above, perhaps even an Angel. Or was it the mother he’d thought had something of great value. He couldn’t even remember now.

  I should have seen earlier at least.

  ‘Tell him to go back to Stowe,’ Hugh added. ‘I’d like to walk in my garden. I need to plan once last time a confrontation with our sorry king.’

  Put not your trust in princes…

  [3]

  Fulk didn’t mind waiting again, his earlier frustrations at a lost meal forgotten now. It wasn’t in him to bother with anger for too long, since it didn’t feed him.

  He was patient and still, sitting low in a tree, and dozing. He was pleased to hear some animal approach, although when he looked up he couldn’t tell what it was at all. He would get a clear view when it came right in front of him.

  Why the creature stopped right in front of him though puzzled him. He knew he couldn’t possibly be seen and he hadn’t made a noise. And what it was wasn’t like any animal Fulk knew.

  He stared at it, unmoving, and it stood there. It only needed to take one more step.

  And then it did.

  Fulk jumped down knowing to put the pained creature away from its anguish as quickly as possible and he took a rock from the ground and brought the thing down on its head. No animal should be made to suffer; Fulk knew this to be right. But the creature was strange to him and his cleverness told him it would not be wise to eat it if he had no clue what it was. He would not leave its carcass to be feasted on by another though, and he’d seen enough of the soldiers who kept coming into the forest and disturbing things, so thought to bury it in some way.

  He pulled apart the metal trap from the creature’s leg and dragged it by its good leg. It was very light and bony. After a few paces the creature’s strange skin peeled off its body and up over its head and then Fulk, paying closer attention, was afraid at what the thing now could be.

  Fear for Fulk leapt quickly into action. His survival required it, and standing about weighing up some situation was not of much use to him even if it was something he was capable of.

  He knew instantly what to do with it and turned back to dragging the carcass along as he had been.

  When he came upon the well near the edge of the Thane’s manor, he hoisted the thing over the crumbling wall and dropped it. He was surprised at a small and distant splash heard beneath.

  Jacob Yazd’s son felt that extending the boundaries imposed on him by his father’s fears was not such a problem. Taking a yard stick from the back of his father’s shop, intent on knocking cones from the trees in the woods, he set off along a worn trail, his leather shoes kicking stones along the way. At the edge of the woods, he saw a dense flight of birds suddenly rise from the treetops and couldn’t imagine that his own arrival caused such reaction. He thought perhaps he heard a scream, but then guessed it to be a bird or animal from far away.

  He took to knocking cones at the edge of the wood. He didn’t like to go far into the trees; there were tales he’d heard of things even a grown man might not want to discover hidden in there. Once he had a goodly pile, he took off his tunic and tied knots in the neck and sleeves and used it for a sack to carry his cones. He didn’t keep all of them; there were some not opened and no use for anything, and so he used them to practise his throwing, hefting them at other cones higher up in the trees.

  When he’d had enough of that, he heaved his makeshift sack over his back and took the same path back again to the town. The cones were sharp on his bare back through the shirt’s cloth, and he stopped often to change the way he carried it.

  Nearly back to the village, he recognised two of the Thane’s men coming on an intersecting path towards him, one of them with a sack of something across his shoulder. The boy worried at the menacing look in their eyes when they spotted him, but he felt unfortunately compelled to stand stock-still and watch as they passed by just ahead of him. He thought he saw two bony arms and hands hanging out of the sack down the man’s back.

  The priest, in his buggy, met the two men along his way and had the contents of the sack laid down on the ground before him. It had been a very strange day. Not anything like any other. So another curious sight, albeit grotesque, hardly seemed to dent the priest’s composure. He wondered anew at his own balance of mind that he could feel very little when he looked upon the figure before him in the grass. Then he quickly realised that wonder
ing at himself was not of any meaningful use, and immediately he had the Thane’s men bundle the awful load into the rear of his carriage. His thoughts dictated he should take the body to the Cathedral; a thought he questioned since surely he should head to the child’s parents, but aside from finding this a barely tolerable option, he felt pulled towards the great town and its centrepiece, and he hoped also its spiritual leader, the Bishop. He himself could barely make head or tail of events and was resisting any new panic for the future of the wavering peace about him.

  Finding yet another unusual voice in his head that day, he bade the Thane’s men return to their lord and not bother the town.

  ‘And tell your Master he must send word to the boy’s mother,’ he instructed.

  Then seeing the first hint of defiance, he added, ‘And be quick about it!’ surprising even himself with his new-found authority.

  He didn’t begin to consider the nature of the child’s demise, except that he knew others would invent every absurd possibility their imaginations and suspicions could invent, and he determined he would present some new firmness over those who would invent such nonsense, and those others who would take power from their weakness.

  The men scurried away exchanging a range of looks that summed things up for them, including some new regard for the hitherto awkward cleric. The priest had a new layer of strength about him.

  The priest thought better of wasting time indulging in any sense of accomplishment. He eyed the wrapped bundle behind his seat and gee’d his horse forward, with more than a little anger in his soul, and a path before him that he felt God alone had lit. His was to follow.

  It was a few days later when Geoffrey and Denholm Warriner were called to a stop in their stonework, and followed the other men to the ground and through what had been the Nave of the cathedral. The purpose was not so clear, but theirs was not to question: it was something or other and they were to be there. As they followed behind others, they heard whisperings that some poor innocent was to be entombed in a new piece of wall, as some acknowledgement to the power of the Church and its mercy. Some other man spoke of what he’d heard, that it was some heathen act of the Jews. And yet, some other talked knowingly of Jewish legend and devil sacrifices and candles and had others about him intrigued and turning with the same knowing to their neighbour. An older man, standing near to the boys, was heard to say to himself – or whoever wished to hear it – that most of these pronouncements were rubbish and most likely another had lost his life to the Church’s walls and scaffolds.

  ‘Let’s move t’front t’see wha’s hapnin’, Gree,’ urged Dem and pushed his way anyway, and without much thought, forward through workmen lingering by..

  Dem followed his brother, apologising to a few he thought had been shoved too much by his sibling.

  ‘Dem!’ Gree whispered loud. ‘Take more care!’ And he grasped his brother’s shoulder firmly and halted him.

  Dem reached nearly to the front though, where he saw a great man in purple dress, and priests about him.

  ‘It’s Bishop, Dem!’ Gree whispered again. ‘Lower your head!’ To which Dem did as his brother bid, peering up through the hair hanging over his eyes.

  The purple man looked momentarily at him and then to Gree over his shoulder, and for a second only both thought they were to be called out of the throng for some crime, such was the look of knowing from the Bishop..

  ‘There’s our Father there,’ Dem spoke quietly back over his shoulder to his brother, indicating Father Taylor.

  ‘Aye. Wonder what he’s about here.’

  They watched as the priest looked briefly at them also and then whispered something in the Bishop’s ear, provoking a long stare from the taller man towards the priest and then around and about the workers standing there.

  Meanwhile, another white-clothed cleric stepped forward and a reading began. And so followed a service, none of which many, or any, understood, for it was spoken in Latin, but most knew their own parts by heart and where to say them and when to kneel and when to cross themselves.

  Then to everyone present it was apparent the Bishop would speak, either from the deep breath he took and exhaled slowly, or knowing that it was just that at this moment it was he who was suddenly at the centre of the great Nave’s orbit. A silence stretched up from the stone floor and harnessed itself about every man’s shoulders. It was a cold draught of death, and each present stooped a little and bowed his head and more than a few felt a shiver from it.

  The Nave was open in parts to the sky, although the Bishop stood in a small shaded part, all the better the boys thought since he seemed to wear many layers of clothes.

  ‘Let us pray …,’ he said in a quiet voice that carried to the back row.

  No one among the working men seemed to know who was the dead, and the brothers could not see a body or its coffin from where they stood.

  Dem said to Gree, ‘Ought be our brother as gets put in the wall here, seen as ’e’s given his life to the buildin’ of ’em.’

  And while he might have thought something similar to himself, mostly it pleased Gree that nobody appeared to have heard his brother’s opinion.

  When the thing they’d been called to was done, the workmen turned away to their work and soon after that the thing itself was forgotten, excepting that they tended to take a little more care each day where they trod and how they balanced.

  Alice and Gamel Warriner, who stood to the side away from where their elder sons may have seen them, were each committed in their own way not to look about for Denholm or Geoffrey among the many workers who descended upon their unusual scene. Nor had either wondered particularly why another son was now to be buried in the Cathedral, except that it was the express wish of the Bishop himself who had some special care for the boy. Gamel thought better of even contemplating that. Alice understood that another besides herself had seen the glow of Thomas and the tragedy of that light having gone out. She would not really remember being in the Cathedral that day, but she would always remember the Bishop’s face alongside that of her Thomas.

  When Father Taylor’s message reached Hugh en route to his country house, again he turned on the road, to head this time for the Cathedral and its town. He’d met there with a rather new Father Taylor who had taken charge in his absence and remarked to his Lord Bishop that he’d felt it best to quell opinion, to which the Bishop could only have agreed.

  Hugh had found the man a new comfort to him, and together they had planned a Christian burial within the new Church walls, hoping to use the opportunity also to herald a new day of tolerance, and fear only of God. But in the days leading to the funeral, and beyond, the bravery they brought to their mutual defence and protection of the Jews of Lincoln seemed in vain. With this limited success, Hugh determined to further scold the King for the absence of his royal protection for a faithful community of subjects, and for refusing any punishment to wayward princes and lords who took the law and the King’s name in their own hands, as seemed to be their wont..

  Ultimately, though, he was perturbed that he could not balance in his mind the sure loss of Jerusalem he had seen in his dream, with the vicious backlash that eventually saw the hangings of nineteen Jews, with the loss of the boy, and then after a while longer with what he assumed as his own swan gone. Each was a tragedy for his soul: one the weight of responsibility to the world for a failure in Christendom, one his inability to curb a prejudice that he could see clearly threatening the truth and beauty he strived to keep alive albeit flimsily among the Christian faithful; the other his own sadness to lose his winged helpmeet who would no longer come to his side, alongside the violence and distortion and prejudice accompanying the passing of one of the most innocent of all, the young boy Thomas Warriner. Which of these was to be mourned the most? It was a tragic irony that his efforts to protect the Jews, through the plans he agreed with Father Taylor for the boy’s interment, became instead an opportunity to blame the Jews for the tragedy of the boy’s death. So many absur
d stories surrounded the child in time that he could scarcely believe the shallow hearts and minds of his fellow Christians.

  He ached to the core of his soul and his mind, and neither of these gave him any solution or any respite as they circled painfully about each other, dark and unrelenting..

  It would be many weeks before he would let go these sorry occurrences from his mind and collect his strength and character to a resolution that would again support a true Christian community, with the knowledge forever that he had either misread or seen too late some indications with which he might have acted sooner.

  After his impromptu dash to Lincoln, where he had sent urgent word to the Bishop and then simply waited for his arrival, Father Taylor realised he must next return to the boy’s parents, who would not have been informed well by the Thane or his men. And he would visit again with the townsfolk and ensure their well-being.

  The priest knew something had happened that changed his view of the world, and he was glad of God’s mercy to him. His load was now a different one, to bring a balm to the suffering, and he determined he would seek the counsel of the Bishop more often.

  The storm that broke though nearly consumed Father Taylor, and it required every speck of his new-found finesse to handling every intricate stage of what then unfolded. There was no telling what had brought the death of the boy really, and the priest had as much faith in the testimony of a Thane’s man as any other thug. But in the end, there was no escaping the baying for blood, and the village and the town had sought their prey in the Jews. Out of nowhere the King, and then the Duke of Cornwall, joined the fray ostensibly to bring a swift and strong justice, but even Father Taylor knew this noble virtue eluded them as much as they cared not a jot for the boy, preferring any reason to support the further frailty of the Jews. In all, ninety-odd Jews were arrested from around about and held in the Tower of London no less. A clemency was sought by Hugh, and the priest knew that when only nineteen were hung that this had more to do with the power of the Bishop than any mercy on the part of the King.