I rose to my feet, still taller than him.
‘As abbot of Glastonbury, as bishop of Worcester, I cannot see the crown stained in sin,’ I said.
Some wisp of sense and horror entered me then, too late. I really did not want to denounce the king in front of his guests on his coronation night. Most of what had gone on would still be unknown to them, if I did not describe it.
It had been a mistake to mention my titles, however.
‘Abbot of Glastonbury, was it?’ he roared at me. ‘No more! Bishop of Worcester? Gone! I will find better men than you, Dunstan.’
‘You will not, as God is my judge. You cannot take those things from me, Your Highness,’ I said in fear.
He came close and stood looking up into my eyes.
‘Perhaps I could not, before you gave me reason. You gave me reason.’
I felt my senses swimming and my jaw sagging open like a halfwit as the king strode over to the feasting table once more. He spread his arms wide.
‘I had thought to begin my reign with a feast, but instead I will begin with the banishment of a sour priest. Gather whatever you wish, Father Dunstan. My guards will take you to the coast and put you in a boat. You will not return to England.’ A thought struck him and I saw the old spite, the old fury. ‘Do not think to find safety with my brother Edgar. If I hear you have found a space under his wing, I will ask him for your head. No, father. Live free and far from me. Go to France. Go to Flanders. Go to hell if you wish, but go from here and go from my sight!’
He had a fine turn of phrase, that vicious cur. I thought to argue with him, but the feasters were delighted with their master’s display. They hooted at me and cried out over my protests. The king had spoken and they would not allow me to answer.
I was taken by the arm and ushered towards the night. I struggled in that grip to look back, seeing Oda’s appalled expression and then the two rumpled strumpets coming back into the hall, their hair restored, their delight visible. The young one dangled the crown in her white hand. I roared that they were whores and jezebels, but those at the feast table all howled again like demons, as if it was all just a great game.
I saw the daughter bend her head to Edwy and whisper in his ear. She put the crown over his curls, pressing it down. It reminded me of Salome asking for the head of John the Baptist. I had a terrible sick feeling steal upon me as King Edwy looked up once more.
‘Wait a moment,’ he called.
His men halted and turned, making me face the king and his harlots.
‘Lady Elgiva reminds me that she too suffered this evening, Dunstan, at your hands and at your word. Hold him!’
I had begun to struggle as that concubine came drifting over the floor towards me. I have never felt so vulnerable as at that moment, when she leaned close enough for me to feel her breath upon my neck.
‘I saw you watching,’ she whispered. Her voice sent a shiver through me.
‘What restitution would you have, my love?’ Edwy called to her. ‘Shall I make him bark for you like a pretty dog? Or kiss your feet? He bruised you with his rough words and his accusations. Shall I have him flogged for it? Would you like to hold the whip?’
I heard Oda shout in outrage, but that crowd were drunk on cruelty, even aroused by it. The devil himself sat in that room with us.
‘He was so proud before, Edwy,’ Elgiva said. Her voice was warm. I saw then how beautiful she was, how red her lips were. ‘I think I would like to see him crawl.’
‘You are the great enemy,’ I said, spitting out the words. ‘The more you rejoice, the more you will have to regret, when it is your turn to be judged.’
‘Possibly,’ she said, leaning close once more. ‘But tonight, it is your turn.’
Edwy gave the order and I stood as long as I could, while his guards beat at me. I fell in the end when they kicked my legs away, so that I could not rise up and saw only my own blood on the stone floor. I remember Elgiva laughing as she beckoned to me. I came up to my hands and knees and she told me they would stop if I just crawled to her.
I tried to curse her, but there was laughter on all sides and I could only mouth my pain, blind to them all.
I lost some part of that evening, or rather it was stolen from me. It took the cold of the night to revive my senses as I was taken outside at last. The doors slammed at my back, shutting off light and sound and laughter. I spat blood.
The king’s guards ambled along to dark horses, waiting with dozing boys in the gloom.
‘Can you ride, father?’ one of them said.
I tried to nod, but there was not enough light for them to see me and so I cleared my throat and said I could. My teeth were loose and my face felt extraordinarily swollen, as if my lips and cheek and eye had grown together. I spent some time touching the most tender parts with my hands, then cursing as I felt at least two of my fingers had been broken. For a time the world swam.
‘We gave him a right hiding inside,’ the guard said. ‘For peering up the lady’s skirts or something. Dirty old bastard.’
I moaned in response and he pulled me to my feet from where I had slumped.
‘Still with us, then? Good,’ he said. ‘I’ll tie you on if you can’t stay on, see? You’re in my care now, until I put you in a boat, just like the king told me to.’
‘King Edwy? He won’t even remember in the morning,’ I murmured, struck by the change in my fortunes and beginning to gather my poor spilled wits. ‘Don’t you see? He’ll regret everything he said. He’ll ask where I am. What will you say then? Just let me at least wait until the sun is up, to apologise. In the name of God, man! Just let me stay for a while, right here with the horses!’
To my astonishment, the guard struck me again, twice in quick succession. The fresh pain helped to sober me further, though the second blow made me vomit at his feet, so that he cursed me. As if I’d done it to annoy, rather than because he’d punched me in the gut.
‘What is your name?’ I asked him.
He only snorted at me.
‘I’m the king’s man, father, not yours. That was just a last taste, if you understand me. You go to the boat without any fuss and you’ll get no more. I’ll wave you off, see? But if you struggle or argue with me, I will take you somewhere quiet and I will finish what we started in the hall. I’ll kick your teeth in.’
He peered at me, looking for resistance. I turned away from his bright malice to mount the horse, though I had to stifle a cry as I stretched bruised ribs.
As I breathed deep of the night air and closed my eyes, my mind felt clear for the first time since sitting down to the feast. I was appalled at the suddenness of my change of fortune and I could only moan as moment after moment of it flashed before me. I had been a fool, but I had not deserved such treatment, such bitter humiliation.
I made no further appeal to the king’s guards. They were not the Witan, or a magistrate, able to decide guilt or innocence. Their role was to be obedient to the king’s wishes. I had no words left to turn them aside from that duty.
We rode away from London, crossing the river over the deserted bridge and heading south to the coast as the sun rose. There were a few carts coming the other way, but no one hailed us, three men out riding in the dark.
The sea was some fifty or sixty miles to the south, so a messenger rider might have done it in a single day. At our ambling pace, we did not make it before nightfall. It meant we had to stop at a tavern till morning. For the first time, I was back amongst respectful Christian folk, who bowed their heads at the sight of my tonsure.
There was no question of escape. The guard who had struck me slept in the same narrow bed while the other laid himself out in front of the door. One or the other was always awake. Yet they did not stop me writing letters, paid for from my dwindling purse. I bought paper and ink and wax and spent the night writing to Wulfric and Oda and Prior Caspar and King Edgar in the north. I handed them all to the innkeeper as I left, with a few coins to take them to their destinations. The act gave me hope.
At some fishing village on the south coast, perhaps Worthing, my nameless guard found a merchant captain who would give me a berth. The man eyed my swollen face and demanded twelve pence to take me to Flanders. I refused to pay him. I could hardly see it was a cost I should count as my own! There was a struggle and the angry guard struck me again as he wrestled my pouch away. He handed the sailor six pennies and then pocketed the rest, leaving me with nothing. He just sneered when I demanded it back. I had known humiliation before, but I had lost the habit of it. I had forgotten the appalling frustration of justice denied.
I saw the white cliffs bright in the morning sun as I left Wessex, heading for the continent, with all my life in ruins behind me. My Wessex, my home. I think I did weep. I can say it was because I stood too close to the king’s hearth, but the truth is, I had brought it on myself in my pride and my righteousness.
Not that I was wrong, of course, though that did not make any of it easier to bear. I imagine a few saints felt as I felt that morning. Wounded, wronged and broken by the world, but still, in the final accounting, in the right. It was not much comfort as the wind blew up and I began to shiver.
The captain answered me only with grunts and curses at first, but when we were out at sea and I still stood at his elbow, he told me Ghent was our destination. He was happy enough to boast about the fortune he would make that trip. On that subject, he was willing to talk all day. England had more wool than anyone could make into cloth, while the cities of Flanders had more looms than they could find thread to fill them. He was a rich man, so he said. I wanted to tell him I’d spent gold and silver by the cartload on my abbey, more than he would see in a dozen lifetimes. Yet I had learned to keep my mouth shut. I said nothing and he thought he had impressed me.
We were a week at sea and then three days on barges coming inland to the city along a river as wide and deep as the Itchen in Winchester. As soon as we moored, I stepped onto the shore and walked away without looking back. The captain shouted something, but I did not return to find out what it was.
Ahead of me, on a fine hill that overlooked the city, was the walled abbey of St Peter, just as I’d heard. I had never visited Flanders before that day, but I spoke fluent Latin and Greek and I could find a welcome in any monastic house or church for a thousand miles. Our community was greater than the boundaries of nations, with Rome guiding us all, no matter where we were born. I had welcomed ‘stranger monks’ at Glastonbury from as far afield as Aleppo and Jerusalem. I would be welcomed in turn, as a brother.
My steps were light as I strode up the hill on good cobbles, seeing signs of wealth all around me. It was not perhaps as wide as Winchester, but there were only a few beggars and the city seemed busy and prosperous. There were new houses and warehouses being constructed all along the docks there, where the rivers met.
At the gate of the monastery, I pulled a small bell and waited for an age for the door to be answered. I was a little surprised to find it shut at all, but I suppose I was more used to Glastonbury, where the marsh meant fewer visitors.
When the door opened at last, it was to reveal a tonsured man old enough to be a grandfather. In Latin, I told him I was Abbot Dunstan of Glastonbury and bishop of Worcester. I begged him to let me enter, as I had fallen on hard times.
He raised his hand and I flinched like a beaten dog, after all the rough treatment I’d endured. Yet it was only to pat my arm and reassure me. He reached out then to take me by the chin, turning my head back and forth so he could examine my scrapes. He said nothing and I wondered if he had taken a vow of silence. Still, he smiled and patted my arm once more. I felt my gut unclench and some of the fear leave me. I was taken in and fed and shown to a small cell with a clean pallet and dried herbs strewn to make the air sweet.
The old man turned to face me as I sat down on the only chair. His Latin was very clear, though the voice was an old man’s piping note.
‘I am Brother Favager. You are welcome to remain as long as you wish. Please rest, my son. Abbot Reynault will want to see you, but he is away in Antwerp and he will not be back for a week or two. We do not get many visitors from England and he will be delighted when I write to him. I should think Count Arnulf will ask you to dine with him as well, when he hears. Until then, eat, sleep, pray. We are a quiet order. You will find peace here.’
He patted me on the arm for a third time, and if that sounds like a small thing, you have never felt quite as alone and abandoned as I did. Brother Favager drew my attention to the pot beneath the bed and the jug in the corner. He blessed me and left me to think on my old life – and my vengeance.
34
I learned to like the Flemish, in the time I spent among them. They were tall and serious Christians for the most part, without too much frivolity. They prided themselves on being good hosts and seemed to take more of an interest in food than I was used to at home. Even the simple fare provided at the abbey was most varied. They made a superb broth of chicken and leeks, and a hare in red wine that was so good as to be almost indecent.
Ah me, like the sunlight of my youth, or the odours of flowers long ago, I cannot go back. My mistakes have been made and cannot be unmade. That is why I can write them now, when there is nothing to be done. The pain is more distant, the wounds become scars.
I had been fortunate in the destination of that ship’s captain, I will admit. Not only did he find me a city where I would be made welcome as a fellow Benedictine, but ships travelled between Ghent and England in unceasing procession. My letters could go out and be answered within a few weeks.
I wrote again to Wulfric, knowing I could trust him. His reply reached me before the abbot of St Peter’s returned, as the fellow was delayed in Antwerp on some business of the order. Abbot Reynault acted as a private moneylender to noblemen of Flanders, providing a vital service and gaining more than a little influence.
I clutched Wulfric’s letter to my belly under the robe as I swept along the cloisters there. Every monk I passed bowed or smiled to me, though I saw them each day. That sense of welcome had begun to grate a little, I will admit.
In the privacy of my cell, I opened the outer packet and drew out thick folded papers, sealed with a circle of wax – and impressed with a wyvern ring. My heart sank as I snapped it in two and read.
It seemed King Edwy had learned the lesson of his father’s short life and shorter reign. He had married his sweetheart just a few days after wearing the crown. Elgiva, whose name seemed to burn into my eyes as I saw it in my brother’s letter. The woman I had called a whore in front of hundreds of guests. The harlot who had smiled as I was beaten to my knees in front of her, who asked sweetly for me to be made to crawl, who pouted her red lips at the king. She, who was my queen. She, who was mine enemy. I would have brought the world to ruin to bring her low. I was still a young man – and they will roll the dice.
When Abbot Reynault joined us, he brought some life to that sleepy little abbey on a hill. He was a large, pale man who used his hands to express whatever his words could not. Yet his Latin was clipped and strange in places, as if I heard words from another age. I told him so and he seemed delighted. I learned he adored Cicero’s style and tried to mimic it in reverence to that great orator.
More importantly, the abbot heard my poor tale and showed all the disgust and anger I hoped he would. I did not share every detail with him, only that I had been ill-used in front of a great feast by the new king—and that the woman had become queen. My humiliation made his eyes glitter in fury. He understood well enough that I did not want my whereabouts to be reported back to the royal court, especially that I had found a place where I was welcome. I had no idea how far King Edwy would go in his spite, but I didn’t want armed men climbing those abbey walls in the night, looking for me. A king can reach across the sea. But he was not the only one.
If I had been poor, I dare say I would not have been able to set anything in motion. Yet I had been the royal treasurer for ten years, and had amounts left with mo
neylenders as far apart as York and Winchester, in my name, no other. More, I had Wulfric, whom I trusted.
The difference between having a friend and having a brother comes when a man has to deal with a body. Wulfric would never betray me, I knew. Every time he hugged his wife with one poor arm, or kissed his daughter Cyneryth, he owed it all to me. I wrote to him, reminding him of an old game we’d played as children, replacing letters so that it became a jumble to anyone else. The Greeks had tattooed their messages on the scalps of soldiers, then let the hair grow back. Julius Caesar had used a simple cipher in his letters and I adopted it. It would not have survived the attentions of a clever man, but it would not give all our secrets to a quick and stolen glance either. That was enough for me to begin. I added shifts and codes within codes later, so that Wulfric began to complain it took him half a day to read my letters.
I have never cared for wealth, though some will spend their lives in its pursuit. Yet Wulfric was apparently astonished by the amounts of coin I owned. I will say only that I hardly noticed such sums in my daily work.
I have said I trusted Wulfric and I did, but my business was destruction. I could not put some things in ink or on vellum. Some things had to be said face to face, with no one to overhear.
He said he could not come, when first I summoned him. The winter rushed upon us and the smallest merchant ships rocked in port, gelded by storms along that coast. I worked my codes and made my plans – and even drew designs for the master weavers, when they asked about English work. Ghent was cold in winter, the whole city locked in ice and quiet, so that a man could hear only the crunch of snow and his own breath as he walked the streets.
All I could do was endure the cold and the grey. I attended the services and the meals. I spent entire months without saying a word to another, lost in my own contemplations. I thought for a time that the silence would swallow up my anger, but it seemed to beat it on a forge, so that it gleamed as yellow bar. I told myself it was for the dignity of the Church, that my humiliation was a sin that cried out for justice. But it was for me.
The Abbot's Tale Page 34
