TEN WEEKS THAT CHANGED ENGLAND
She is just a woman in the milling crowd outside the palace of Westminster and what she hears first is the distant thunder of horses’ hoofs on the cobblestones as the cavalcade comes up the street from the Horse Ferry. The roar as the horsemen approach, the clash of steel, of armour, of swords rattling in scabbards, and the shouts of the captains, the combined response of the militia increases until it is a deafening wave of sound and then she sees them, the duke’s men, his cavalcade sweeping by on the way to the opening of Parliament, black horses tossing their heads against the restraint of harness, clipped manes plaited and beribboned in green and gold, coats polished to the brightness of mirrors, riders like enamelled toys, everything spruce and rich and glittering as it flashes by and she sees in the great press of horse flesh, man flesh, royal power, in sunlight harsh before rain, with the shadow of the great tower briefly like a hand passing over the men, the horses, she sees them riding through this shadow, and in the midst of the roar and glitter she sees him, John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster, the puissant duke, surrounded by his close body-guard armed to the teeth, their shining casques, their breast-plates, cuirasses, greaves, all accoutred and fearsome to the unarmed, thread-bare, unshod populace, and a foul threat to those who oppose this ancient force, this arrogation of power and, as if oblivious to it, he, the great duke, the third son, Head of the King’s Council, stares straight ahead between the ears of his war horse, face set in disdain for the lower orders, the populace, the populists, the rabble, the stink and heat of them closing in on both sides of his cavalcade, held back, held in place, pressed back where they belong, by the armed guards, by the guards of the great duke, his disdain expressed in a baleful stare, even his combed and powdered beard expressing contempt in its perfection, its order, like his garments of triple-dyed velvet, slashed sleeves revealing purple silk slithering next to his skin, his ducal skin, his royal skin, and on his feet his riding boots of Spanish leather, his gold spurs, and on his hands his rings, his rings glinting on every finger, his Plantagenet fingers, and his chain of office, this office impressive to anyone below the rank of king, this third son, this malcontent despite his lucrative marriages bringing lands to rival those of his father, Edward the King of England, and now he, assuming the power of his dying, beloved and fabled elder brother known in later times as the Black Prince, the magnificent prince, the war hero, this duke now, John, beringed, puissant, riding his war horse towards Parliament in the year thirteen hundred and seventy six, expresses disdain and the crowd falls silent as he and his army roar past.
The woman in the crowd watches him go.
He is the most hated man in England. Hated for his rapacity, his many mistresses, for the shameless exploitation of his female servants and the numberless children fathered on them, hated because he schemed his way to what he is now, Head of the King’s Council, the chief in council, powerful now that the venerable yet senile King Edward III is too weak to hold the sceptre in his grip. He is hated for allowing corruption at court, for allowing the hard-earned money of the over-taxed poor to be squandered on failed and humiliating battles with the French in a war nobody but the nobles want, he is hated for allowing the courtesan Alice Perrers free access to the royal jewels, the pearls, the gold, the rubies and to filch coin from the king’s coffers which are filled with all that stolen from the people, from people taxed into starvation, stoical people who till the land, who grow the crops, who breed the animals, who run the Guilds that make every single object of use and beauty this realm is capable of producing, all these, the people of England, exploited and disdained by such as he, this duke, riding to Parliament to exact yet more pence from a people who can no longer pay for the bread to feed their children, and hated, this stand-in for the old magnificent fake, the old king, for allowing these riches accrued in war and by the labour of the people to be squandered to satisfy the passing fads of court sycophants and the greedy and ambitious nobility, the dukes, the earls, the barons.
This woman in the crowd watches him ride by.
And so the thundering uproar of his cavalcade drowns out the silence of the citizens of London and the folk from the shires as it has always drowned out the silence of the powerless. The duke believes he has a God-given right to do so. Only one voice is allowed and it is not that of the people. It will not be the voice of the people. It will never be so. And yet he is riding to the parliament when, they say, the voice of the people will be heard. It must be heard. The shire knights and the city merchants demand it. Compassion for the poor and starving demands it. Righteousness demands it. Justice demands it. The weak and mild and servile at last demand it. It is their right. The Commons will speak for them. This time they will speak and this time they will be heard.
The cacophony of horses and riders continues over the silence of the crowd herded behind the lines of guards, it continues, as it seems, without end until something changes. Something happens. It is so sudden it seems like a miracle and a reversion of all the laws of reason. It is a black miracle.
It has the power to make the double lines of horses falter, like a break in the forward surge of a wave, like an ocean’s ripple of coming storm, disturbing the disciplined ranks, the metallic power of the passing militia because, unplanned, unexpected, a child - it is a child, a girl with streaming hair - this child runs out under the linked arms of the armed guards posted along the route to protect the duke and all the upholders of privilege, this child runs under the arms, under the gauntlets and the raised swords, and the guards only see her when she is already alongside Gaunt’s destrier, his big war horse caparisoned in blue silk threaded with gold and embroidered in the symbols of his House of Lancaster, they only see her when she calls up to him, her face turned up as a flower to the sun, and when she falls under the hoofs of his horse and when the blood pours down the side of her head they see her then and the crowd gasps and presses forward with an anger risen suddenly in a hot eruption at this further insult to their humanity because Gaunt, the great duke, seeing the child, seeing her fall and seeing the blood, rides on, he rides on, and his men after him and the child lies still as they thunder past.
It has taken a moment, a blink of an eye but, quickly following, a figure in a black robe pushes through the guards with peremptory confidence and, by virtue of her Benedictine habit the guards give way and she runs to the child, bending to cradle her, to succour her, to weep. She is followed by the woman from out of the crowd who has watched in silence as the duke rides by, a woman attired in the expensive garments worn by the wife of a shire knight, in crimson cloth, miniver-trimmed, her hair loose beneath its fillet, glittering silver pale to her waist, her cloak for a moment concealing the child from the onlookers who were standing near and who are now pressing against the guards, oblivious of swords and menaces, the soldiers’ curses, and as the cavalcade clatters on in its arrogance and bustle to the yard in front of Westminster Hall and the guards, job done, their lord safely dismounting and entering the great hall, follow on, leaving the way free for the crowd to press towards the fallen child as others, streaming in the wake of the guards, begin to mill like packed wolves outside the iron-studded doors of the Great Hall, this woman from among the on-lookers runs forward to aid the nun. Guards, swords crossed, prevent access to the parliament hall and stare straight through the faces of the people as if they cannot see them, through those men and women jostling a ragin
g but prudent blade length away with their anger curling before them. And the law of deference prevails.
But the group round the child are noisy, indignant. They heard her plea to Gaunt. Help me, your Grace, we are hungry. Please help us, I beg you, for the sake of my little brother and sister, we are hungry. Please give them something to eat.
And she fell in front of him. Did he lash out at her?
I wouldn’t put it past him.
I didn’t see. Did you?
How could he hurt her? A mere child!
What else do you expect?
He rode on!
Arrogance. Too high for remorse.
Hatred for all his breed. The Lord will punish him in hell.
Or we will pull him down the sooner.
The child, a girl of no more than eight is lying motionless on the ground with the Benedictine nun wiping her bruised and bloody forehead with her sleeve. The woman in the crowd with the silvery skein of hair, reaches inside her cloak and pulls out a linen cloth to staunch the blood. We must take her somewhere where we can attend to her, she says.
The nun agrees. Help me carry her into the abbey. The monks in the hospitium will help us.
The lady calls, Guy! We need your strength. A handsome youth of about eighteen wearing the ivory and green colours of his lord, slouches forward. Ever willing, dear lady sister. Bending to lift the child he gently crooks the little bag of bones with its tousled hair and cheap hempen frock into his arms and the small group, followed as far as the abbey precinct, is watched by the silent crowd as they take her inside to safety.
Two children trail after them like little lost table dogs, one a boy of six or so blubbing loudly dragging with him a silent tottering girl of two or three. They are emaciated. Nothing but bone, the sharp joints almost sticking through their flesh, unkempt hair a fuzz like birds’ nests, a red sore on the boy’s mouth. They attach themselves to the group tending the injured girl. They stand like shadows in the doorway of the hospitium and nobody thinks to usher them away.
Eventually the boy presses his knuckles into his eyes to repress his tears and bravely steps close enough to tug at the edge of a cloak. My lady? and when the lady turns he steps back as if expecting a blow and she notes his distress, his frightened face, his eyes darting and fixing on the white face of the other child lying prostrate in blood on the stone flags.
What is it, young master?
It’s our Bet you’ve got there.
Is she your sister?
He nods. Tears flood his eyes. She’s our mother now our real mother’s dead. He begins to howl with a sudden, unrestrained grief he is unable to cage into words while the baby, the toddler, gripping tightly to the torn hem of his tunic, her tiny knuckles white, like seed pearls, stands mute with eyes wide enough to take in all the horror of her brother’s grief and the as yet unfelt grief of her own orphaned world.
The helpful esquire in his smart town clothes turns from the nun and the cloaked woman and goes over to the two children. He crouches to their level. They’ll fix her up, he consoles. Worry not. The monks will make her as good as new.
As if shocked at being spoken to in such soft tones the boy stops his howling on a gulp and stares like a cornered sparrow, backing away, dragging the small child with him, to huddle against the wall, fluttering and trapped. The esquire begins to rummage under his cloak.
Here, have something to drink, my little chicks. He unties a leather bottle from off his belt and holds it out. The boy looks on longingly but make no move to take it. The toddler glances at him, glances back at the gift, almost reaches out but then, courage failing, hides her face in her brother’s sleeve.
Come now, my sister-in-law wishes it, he persuades, turning towards the woman in the cloak who is now in urgent conversation with the hospitaller. He waits until she is finished then calls softly, Hildegard, look at these two waifs here, what do we do with them?
The nun is already following the injured child where she is being carried on a small stretcher into the hospitium. A monk instructs his assistant on how to tend her injuries. The two children watch their sister being taken away. They stand like small wooden statues in the doorway. Other monks appear as the esquire pushes the bottle into the boy’s hand who, mastering his fear, snatches it up and drinks until he chokes then holds it out for his little sister, guiding it to her mouth while the lady is offering to pay the nuns, the monks, for their care of the injured child. The little one drinks and gulps and drinks again. Noticing the two urchins in the doorway one of the monks offers a kindly smile and shepherds them over the threshold until like lambs in sudden eager pursuit of a ewe, they rush ahead of him into the echoing building to follow their sister and he murmurs after them: all will be well, all will be well, and all will ever be well amen.
When everything is settled, the esquire, Guy, and his sister-in-law, Hildegard, step into the sunlit yard and are sucked at once into the thick of the crowd gathering with increasing force outside the parliament hall. Anger hangs like a miasma over their heads – so thick you can cut it, murmurs the squire - as the crowds press in to watch more nobles arrive, weapons burnished and glimmering through the moist April light, the cavalcades continually sweeping aside the bystanders who in a listing of names, of hated names identify the newcomers, Latimer, Lyons and their retinues, and when they are safely past let their words fly free.
Demanding our money again for their wars. Why not suck our blood direct and have done with it? God curse them.
It’s us forced to recoup Gaunt’s losses. Why should we? It’s his war, his loss, not ours. A plague on the man.
A litany of recent defeats follows yet again. Everyone knows them off by heart.
These battles, engaged and lost, occurred in real places. Places across the Narrow Seas in a foreign country, in France, in Flanders, where people much like themselves had to suffer the rapacious attacks of foreign mercenaries on their land and property but yet, in these end years of King Edward’s reign and despite the victories at Crecy, Poitiers, when his army won against the odds and started to see themselves as English, the combined forces of the French dukes are now managing to beat them off. Everyone here knows the names of the leaders of these present humiliations and almost to the penny they know how much it costs each one of them in taxes and fines and, if unpaid, of time spent in prison, and yet how much it costs can be calculated in less gross terms than gold, than in taxes, and is more accurately computed in the measure of grief and loss of hope, the unassuaged pain of loved ones, of lost self-esteem and they know that they, the people, suffer on both sides. Where are the victories? they ask. Why are we fighting our brothers and sisters across the Narrow Seas? Where is our quarrel with them? Everyone knows the expensive defeats off by heart. Where is the respite? they ask. When will it end? And most heart-felt of all they ask, after these taxes where is the bread to feed our children?
The young man, Guy, who carried the girl into the abbey hospital, rests a comforting hand on the shoulder of his sister-in-law. Don’t look so distressed, Hildegard. We’ve done what we can.
It is not enough, Guy...I have been immured in comfort in my Welsh idyll so long that the world of cities, of London, of the outside, of the nobles attacks across the seas has made me dull. What I see around me here in London is too shocking to take in all at once. Such poverty everywhere. How do the people survive?
Just then the crowd surges forward as a horn heralds the approach of someone else of importance arriving at the opening - is it the King himself? - people at the back stand on tiptoe to catch a glimpse, sure he will save them from the greed of his third son but then they see a line of drummers coming into view followed by a glittering gold palanquin visible above their heads as if floating in the empyrean with the glory of its burden, and silence folds itself over the surging crowd, under the clamour of the drums and pipes, a silence from the onlookers broken only by a few jeers, a repressed catcall, and over their heads Hildegard glimpses a figure in a golden gown with a glitte
ring coronet on her rippling hair, borne briskly along on a litter supported on the shoulders of six silken-cloaked youths, everything about this spectacle suggesting a female deity from the ancient days, an Aphrodite, a Minerva, or a Medusa perhaps, with snaking blonde locks, and everything golden, the gown, the hair, the settings for the flashing jewels on every finger and the great egg of a balas ruby resting in its golden nest on her bosom, everything, even her slippers of gold thread delicate as something spun from spider webs, suggesting gold and wealth and power and of course she is smiling despite the frost glittering in the eyes of those who behold her, those in their drab and fustian and with hungry bellies and in their arms their pale and famished children.
The Lady of the Sun, growls an onlooker close by in derision.
Lady my arse, his companion replies. Lady with-her-hand-in-our-pockets more like.
One hand in our pockets and the other in the King’s privy parts. That’s her.
Ragged children press between the forest of legs belonging to their elders to get close enough to witness this fantastic apparition. They are stunned. Is it real? Is she a living being? Does she cough and shit like them? A baby, oblivious to this glitter and show, wearing nothing but a ragged blanket howls in its mother’s arms and, grime-stained, she presses her wasted cheek against its own for comfort but without able to stem its hungry cries. Has anybody got a crust to spare? she asks fretfully. For the love of God, somebody?
The stranger who made the comment about the Lady of the Sun opens his pouch and brings out a small, squashed pie. Here, take it, my dear, and St Margaret bless you.
The woman grabs his hand with her free one and covers it in kisses. There are tears standing in her eyes. The grace of God on you, sir.
Where’s your man when you need him?
Waiting on that accursed war to start up again, she replies breaking off a piece of crust and holding it to the mouth of her infant. The baby clutches it in both small fists and crams it between its tiny lips, eyes closing in bliss, and the woman longingly and regretfully lets it take all.
TEN WEEKS THAT CHANGED ENGLAND FOREVER: Prequel - why Hildegard of Meaux became a nun (HIldegard of Meaux medieval mystery sereies Book 10) Page 1
