by Mike Voyce
Chapter 11 – Changes
When next I looked to Edward I found a mirror to myself.
(Past)
The New Year was dismal. The weather was raw and wet so that it was difficult to stay warm.
There were comings and goings of strange people.
Even life with Eadie was not peaceful. We argued, sometimes, and hurt each other in ways we never had before. We would see the hurt each did to the other and we would make up and cling to each other, almost desperate. Underlying all we did was an uneasy and nameless fear. Can God grant such happiness in life or must all be taken away? It was as if some great force waited to strike down the presumption of we poor mortals to feel such joy.
One of the new visitors was a foreigner, from somewhere in Spain. He was standing by the fire when Lady Margaret called me to the library. A dark, hooded sort of man with the shaved head of a priest. Lady Margaret gave his name, which was a long one, I don t remember; he might be a priest but he was also a nobleman. I wondered what to call him.
He spoke in Latin,
“The Countess tells me you are her ward?”
“Yes, father.”
“You like it here in England? It feels so cold. In Spain when it is cold it is dry. You can keep warm. Here the cold strikes your bones.
I come to see your King Henry. Have you, yourself, met him?”
“Edward, the Reverend Father comes on an embassy. We shall entertain him tonight and you shall dine with us.”
It was a small affair of State but the first time I met an ambassador, or spoke Latin outside my lessons and the evenings when Eadie and I secretly set to read the Bible.
On another occasion a short, squat man with a strange accent came from the estate at Caus. I guessed him to be a yeoman farmer for he had the muscles of an archer. In the years with Lady Margaret I’ve been parcelled about many times, mostly to see my mother, but never before has a tenant come to see me. He came well over a hundred miles, by road, on estate business.
“Master Welch, this is your young lord.
Sir Edward, Master Welch is a tenant on your estate. They have very fine farmers in your part of the World, Master Welch.”
The stranger bowed and called me “my lord” and “Lord Stafford,” which made Lady Margaret frown. No one ever called me that; it was always Edward or Master Edward, at most Sir Edward. I found it uncomfortable, and I didn’t trust him.
From my modern flat, I pondered what might be waiting to happen. Something hesitated on the brink of entering the World but was it Edward’s nameless dread or some quite unexpected success. It wasn’t at all clear.
Edward was still wrapped up in Christmas and those presents. He still didn’t know what to make of the Sword and the legend. Neither did Angharad or I. The Sword was specifically given to the Staffords yet, when a de Stafford tried to use it, everything went disastrously wrong. Then again, 281 years had elapsed since Father John’s vision and the Sword was said to be centuries old even then. How did it look so modern and unrusted when it came to Edward? Duke Henry was one of the cleverest men of his generation; would he be taken in by old superstitions? Why should he put his last efforts into a fairy-tale about an old sword?
The talk of rents that Christmas was something I could look into. There’s precious little recorded about Edward’s private life but there are records about his finances; I even found an entire book devoted to the financial management of the Stafford estates. Mostly it's tedious, a mass of place names and figures, but this much emerges; there was fraud, placemen had been allowed excessive latitude in return for supporting the Tudors, a storehouse, full of property records and deeds, muniments as Thomas called them, had been deliberately burned to ashes. Bad as it was, Jasper Tudor had even worse handled Lady Katherine’s estates; tens of thousands of acres of prime woodland had been deforested for the value of the timber on them. Vandalism and waste had gone almost completely unchecked. With Tudor approval, estate officials had winked at poaching and theft, themselves joining in the plunder, till by now the thieves believed that it was theirs by right. Above all, some of the placemen had come to terms with tenants to agree that rent should not reach the estate receivers. No wonder Thomas was worried. The despoliation was such that it could even have come before parliament, if one were ever called.
There really was a William Bedall, possibly appointed to bring order out of the chaos that gripped Edward’s inheritance. It was something we would come back to, but for now there was still time before the course of Edward’s life was to change forever.
(Past)
My birthday approached. There would be no special celebration but I was excited. It would be my fifteenth birthday and a step nearer manhood. It seemed very old.
The beginning of February is always like the end of winter. Eadie and I searched for the first snowdrops and other signs of coming spring. As always, nature was slower than our impatience but we searched and played in the woods. It was too cold to be comfortable but we made loud cries to drive away the winter hush and startle the birds that stay over the cold months.
In the past, Eadie made a pet of a robin, by feeding it from her hand; we had no such pets this year. The winter damp deadened our adventures and we were left to cling to each other. Holding on to each other, pretending to be an old married couple. The days passed.
There was another visitor that winter, another priest, but this time an English one. He was a wise old man of some forty years, not as old as Lady Margaret. He came from the university at Cambridge to test me on my letters.
He had me read to him in Latin. He asked me questions from the Bible and had me quote to him from my readings with Eadie. He spent hours with Thomas, looking at work I’d done, all unconsidered at the time. Thomas had taught me from the Classics and from Gildas and Langland and from much else besides; he showed it all to the priest. The old man seemed neither pleased nor displeased but changeless in his courtesy. Thomas was delighted, he grinned from ear to ear, and he called the priest “doctor”.
I thought Thomas wrong to be so flattered but he wouldn’t listen.
“You’ll be going away to the College, Edward - to be a real scholar.”
I was struck dumb with consternation. To leave my friends, to leave Eadie! Objections took on the force of rebellion.
“Don’t look like that, boy. You shall not go yet, not for months, and when you do go you’ll be treated as a graduate, you shall study with the learned scholars in the college founded by your grandmother. It will do great honour to your name.”
It was one of the few times I saw disappointment in Thomas’ face.
I rushed off to see Lady Margaret.
“Edward, I don’t know what Thomas has been telling you but there shall be no question of you going to Cambridge - certainly not yet.
Your father made a great mark with such scholars but you shall not take up his cause. The estates must come first. There are responsibilities.”
As to myself? I don’t know what to say. You’ve already heard how my life was changing. Edward was taking it over, with all the dilemmas this brought. Edward took the place of any sort of a social life, except for my talks with Angharad. You could feel there was some sort of emotional link between the way things were with him and the way they were for me. This, above all else, was frightening.
If Edward did badly in his life, as I feared he had, how would it affect my life? A ridiculous thought, but I couldn’t drive it away. As the visions moved on, I just watched helplessly.
How was I even to understand why it came to me? I wasn’t happy with a past as Edward, heir to the duke of Buckingham. It’s all very well, and far from stretching credulity, if I had been ‘John the plough boy’, but to claim a dukedom smacks of self-aggrandisement.
You remember I mentioned reincarnation, and then found a way out of it in time-travel of the mind. But that didn’t explain why I was seeing these visions. I’ve thought about van Dusen’s schizophrenics and the voices they heard, if Swede
nborg was right might there be real people in another world? Maybe Edward is a real person, talking directly to my mind. I found yet another answer.
I remember reading, years ago, of the Akashic Script, a record imprinted on the fabric of the Universe of all that’s happened in it. In my reading of medieval literature I found a trick, a meditation, which the Knights Templar had used long before Edward’s time. According to this Templar adepts would go, in their minds, to a great temple. Down in the crypt they would meet a clerk who would conduct them through a great library to exactly the book holding the information they wanted; anything they wanted to know, past present or even future, anything in the Universe. I’ve tried this trick myself, without success.
If I could bring visions of Edward to mind, could I eavesdrop on those around him? Could I find out from them what caused these visions? First I would have to become much more of an adept than I yet was. I talked about it to Angharad.
“Yes, of course you can, why shouldn’t you?”
Angharad’s answer was immediate, but then there was a pause.
I asked, with eyebrow raised,
“How?”
The answer was so simple I didn’t consider it properly.
“You focus your attention on Edward, try thinking about other people you want to talk to instead, they’ll come to you.”
Perhaps, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.
So why was Edward’s life being thrust at me? And, if it wasn’t true, why would I invent such a story? It’s easier to believe it really did happen.
Clearly I was missing something.
I looked for parallels. Not between myself and Edward, but in relationships between people Edward knew and people I know today. I was surprised to find there are such parallels. First, of course, between Eadie and Sarah; this was my most acute embarrassment! But I also found parallels for my daughter, my parents and even some of my friends. This is running beyond the story, yet the more I looked the more I found. It’s all too uncertain a guess; it added such a burden of responsibility to those others and their counterparts alive today.
Sometimes even the images I got seemed to make no sense. What should I make of this next one?
(Past)
It was at my lord Stanley’s house of Knowsley. We’d gone there for my lord’s rents and for sport. I was day dreaming. Perhaps it was the thought of returning to London, most of the household was there already and Lady Margaret was impatient for our return before spring thaws made the roads heavy with mud.
Our party was packing this afternoon but Thomas kept me at my lessons. Before me was spread Master William Langland’s “Vision of Piers the Plowman”, the hand written Passus lay about the table between Thomas and I; and the first lines caught my eye.
“In a somer sesun, whon softe was the sonn,
I schop me into a shroud, as I a scheep were;
In habite as an hermite unholy of werks
Wente I wyde in this world wondres to here;
Bote in a Mayes morwnynge on Malverne hulls
Me bifel a ferly, of fairie, me-thought.
I was wery, forwandred, and went me to rest
Undur a brod banke bi a bourn side;
And as I lay and leonde and lokede on the watres.
I slumbrede in a slepynge hit swyed so murie.
Thenne gon I meeten a mervelous sweven,
That I was in a wilderness wuste I never wher;
And as I beheold into the est an height to the sonne
I sauh a tour on a toft, tryelyche I-maket;
A deop dale bineoth, a dungun ther-inn,
With deop dich and derk and dredful of sight
A faire felde full of folks fonde I there bitwene,
Of alle manner of men, the mene and the riche,
Worching and wandring as the worlde asketh...”
“English will never be the language of scholars. We spell words as we sound them. In Latin, even in Greek, there is a clear right way. In English every man writes as he speaks; Master Langland was never of the court, it leaves his Latin good but his English weak.”
My thoughts ran on Master Langland’s story of how to live in the World and of his perfect hero, Piers the ploughman.
“What should I think of ‘Do-well’, ‘Do-better’ and ‘Do-best’? Could a ploughman, living his life in such purity as ‘Do-best’, really enter the lists to joust with the Devil, even for the souls of the Damned?”
The image conjured before me of Piers, the white knight, uttering the unthinkable challenge and conquering the Lords of Darkness, almost gave me courage for my own journey.
“Yes Edward, even a ploughman.”
Thomas looked rueful,
“But Lady Margaret would tell you no, like the Jews of old, do as ‘Do-well’, look to your own and profit your family. But Master Langland tells us, if you can be a saint and a knight of true humility, you can look beyond yourself, to God’s Will, and Do-best. As for Master Langland, he wrote against the sins of Man and to make good the Church. He gave his vision to all Englishmen, and you shall learn it all before nightfall.
In all humility I lowered my eyes and asked no more. I did not want to open a dispute between Thomas and my guardian. Yet, when I thought of it later, I was touched by an excitement. Piers, the humble knight, was like Sir Percival and the other knights that found the Grail in my father’s book of Sir Thomas Malory.
In the generation following the Black Death, with a third of the population dead, amidst all the horror, grief and stinking bodies, order and morals were shaken to the ground. Throughout Europe the next generation struggled on, probably far better than we would today. It was in these times Langland took the fabric of his own experience to make a hero fit to set beside Christ himself, and the knowledge of it was set before Edward in those days at Knowsley. The “Vision of Piers Ploughman” is still in print and you can read it for yourself, in modern translation if you like. Even after six hundred years it still has the power to inspire. What a pity it came to Edward as mere schoolwork.
Sunday came round again and I took my darling daughter Debbie to visit Angharad. Debbie was packed off with Angharad’s daughter to watch videos and Angharad sat me down with a glass of whisky. The deliberation, with which she poured my glass and hers, lit a cigarette and made everything straight, made me expectant.
“Are you in love with Sarah?”
No doubt I should have expected it but the directness of that question took me off guard. Surprised, I examined my emotions yet again. It seemed I’d done nothing else since that vision of Edward and Eadie. Now I had to face it openly for it was important to me to be honest with Angharad, my hesitation was long.
“No... That is I don’t think so... yet, maybe I ought to be.”
Was this the meaning of these images, somehow a second chance to make good a relationship which had gone wrong? That’s the highest I was prepared to put it. My reluctance wasn’t just based on doubt of these images, or distrust of what I’ve read of reincarnation.
Angharad insisted that any man would find Sarah irresistible. I tried, gently, to tell her; my first love was very like Sarah, but she had had the fresh bloom of youth and the gifts of an actress and a trained ballet dancer. Surely it isn’t likely I’d be so easily impressed by Sarah. I didn’t want to hurt Angharad’s feelings, or see her question my sincerity, but it still vexed me.
Angharad didn’t believe me; she looked patient and even accepting, but not believing.
“Sarah doesn’t need a lover, just a friend.”
Dear reader, I’m not used to being questioned, with anyone but Angharad I would have shown my displeasure. As it was, she only saw my frustration. I don’t know if Sarah’s lovers get any more of her attention than I do but, if not, God help them. If only Sarah had the patience and constancy of Angharad; here at least was true friendship, whatever she thought, I would trust her confidence as I never could trust Sarah.
The conversation ended, the girls came in to invade our priva
cy, Angharad’s daughter was going back to boarding school and there was her trunk to pack. Debbie and I would have to go and find our own amusement. Before we went Angharad told my Debbie about a “brilliant” adventure park, in Telford, that she’d read about; she made it sound very exciting, much to my annoyance. I’d promised to take Debbie out that day, wherever she wanted to go, I was trapped. Very well, I’d take her. I did, we couldn’t find it. It was all part of the day, from Angharad’s vague directions we’d both half expected not to find it. We spent a superb afternoon in Iron Bridge instead.
It was in the car on the way back the conversation arose.
Debbie, was reading “The Witches”, setting her mind on the Supernatural. Her mother, no doubt, told her of a ‘cold spot’ at White Ladies Priory and when Debbie saw a signpost to the priory nothing would do but that I stop the car and we go there.
It was cold, it was late, it was dark and I refused to go. I promised to tell her about it instead. It so happens there’s a rather unusual book, “The Green Stone” by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman; full of supernatural events that have their climax at White Ladies Priory. There’s an evil force which is trapped there and defeated. It’s thrown through the cold spot into some other sort of space, destroying it forever.
Debbie, as a bright nine-year-old, was full of questions.
What’s a cold spot? - Well it’s a sort of doorway.
Between where and where?
To give a sensible answer to that was a good game to exercise our minds. More for my benefit, I’m afraid, than hers.
You read my elaboration of what must be at least a six dimensional model of the Universe, for John that Sunday: three dimensions of ordinary space and three dimensions of super ordinary space (please don’t ask me to go into the dimensions of life just now). In the case of each set of dimensions you also have to add time to make a continuum. To this I added a third set of dimensions to make a third curve called ‘Motive/Time’.
Now we have the continua ‘Space/Time’, ‘Life/Time’ and ‘Motive/Time’. The dimensions in ‘Motive/Time’ run from evil to good, from isolation to togetherness and there’s a dimension of energy from indifference to obsession.
Never under-estimate the mental powers of children. Although it sometimes pleases Debbie to consider me quite mad, she easily followed the idea, as many an adult would not. It let us play a new game, converting the story of “The Witches” to my new terms.
The White Ladies doorway led to evil, isolation and obsession. We couldn’t go through it because of being locked into our ‘Space/Time’ bodies. Just as well really, in view of what might lie on the other side.
It was easy to chatter about such things, and what might come from moving through such doorways, rather like a game of snakes and ladders. It helped us pass the journey in laughter.
My daughter was ‘into’ ghoulish subjects so, when “The Witches” ran out, I told her what I’d heard on the radio, just a few days before, of Rev. Manchester talking about the Highgate vampires. By way of balance, there were miracles at Lourdes, and, of course, King Arthur and the Holy Grail. All of which I related to higher dimensions.
Bright as my daughter is, it wasn’t the sort of conversation any child would retain for long. But I did find it useful with all this confusion over Edward.
One thing I didn’t tell my daughter; since all dimensions must, by definition, be coextensive, that is all present everywhere at once, you don’t need a ‘cold spot’ to get into them, we’re already there.
(Past)
As the afternoon with Debbie moved my real life pleasurably by, so time passed for Edward; spring was coming into the air. You could feel it in the longer days and an almost a tangible rustle in the ground. The flowers and the bird song and a brightness to the light lifted everybody’s spirits.
Eadie and I went out walking, to a special place we visited sometimes. It was late when we got back, tired and happy.
The house and stables were full of bustle and Aletia was fussing round Thomas.
One of the servants said Thomas and I were to tour my estates, to collect missing rents. He said we would be taking one of Lady Margaret’s lawyers and we should be gone a long time.
Leaving Eadie, pale faced, I went off to find the Countess. Yes it was true!
“I’ve spoken to Master Bedell, he is insistent. He and his predecessors have all had trouble with your Welsh circuit and I have received this letter,”
She showed me a letter bearing a seal with a de Stafford device,
“From John Corbett in your Welsh lands. To tell you the truth I’ve had very great troubles with Master Corbett.”
Lady Margaret sighed; for once she looked no greater than her own slight bodily frame. I felt sorry for her.
“You can’t get blood out of a stone... and I believe him. He thinks nothing will get the money out of your tenants unless they see a de Stafford. You, Edward.
I’ve done more, I’ve written to your receivers myself, and to my son’s auditors. They all agree.”
There was a ring of finality in those wards.
“Can’t someone else go?”
I had other relatives, I knew, actually living in Wales.
“You Edward. These are your father’s estates and you are his heir. When your father rebelled many in Wales sided with Richard; he forgave many fee farms in thanks for it. It’s you they want to see: to show that we have the true power in the land.”
“But…”
“This isn’t Kent or Staffordshire, Edward. There are parts of Wales that do not take kindly to an English lord, particularly one they’ve never seen.
If you were younger I wouldn’t send you.”
Lady Margaret’s voice sounded softer and tired.
“There will be those who accuse me of wrongdoing, there is no remedy but that you go and see for yourself. Your presence may silence some discontent.
I do not lightly admit weakness, Edward, do not press me. With your father’s death... even the Tudor name will only go so far on such a matter.
If you don’t go we will lose lands like Master Corbett’s. Many of the rents have been owing for years, and he’s not the only one who’s written the same way. These things can spread like fire.”
There was no further discussion, only settling the arrangements. There was to be a party of thirty two of us, Lady Margaret’s lawyer and his servant, Thomas and I, two dozen body guards, two servants, a groom and a priest. The priest was to be Father Joseph. He was a distant cousin, though I don’t know exactly how we were related, I faintly remembered him from being a small child. My childish memory painted him as mysterious and important. It was a surprise he was even in London. I should be pleased to see him.
Out of doors, blacksmiths were hard at work, the farrier too. The fussing round, the packing, the bustle all made this sudden departure more real.
“Oh, Eadie!”
“How long?”
It was still in the public part of the house where we hugged and clung to each other. No one cared.
Any separation was unthinkable but who knew how long this would be; days, weeks, months. We both privately knew it must be months. It might take weeks in the journey and who knew how long once we arrived.
I only thought of homesickness for Eadie and this house and the tediousness of wrangles over rents and accounts such a long way from home. I hated accounts.
Eadie’s first thought was fearful. Why should we need men at arms? Surely Lady Margaret wouldn’t send me into danger, would she?
“Er... I don’t know, I don’t know how long, she didn’t say. I think there is trouble with rents in several of the manors.”
Eadie turned, suddenly furious, anxious to blame anybody for this parting.
“Oh, Eadie, I shall miss you.”
We held each other until I began to fear the eyes and comments of those around us.
We did our best to console ourselves all that evening. I tried to reassure her and I did all I co
uld but, who can understand women. Clearly the whole thing was my fault and it was my fault she wasn’t coming too. It never seriously crossed my mind that Thomas, or Lady Margaret, or Aletia would let her come and, no, I hadn’t asked.
I expected Eadie to come to my room that night. She didn’t. After what seemed hours it was I who stole along the passages, passing Aletia’s room I stopped, the door was partly ajar but all was in silence, the room empty. I went to Eadie, in the next chamber.
Gently closing the door behind me I found Eadie, huddled up in bed, crying.
My heart went out to her and I was at her side in a moment.
“Oh, Edward, I don’t want to lose you.”
“You never shall my love. Not now, not ever, not in all eternity. Not beyond the grave, not beyond whatever lies after that.”
“Oh, don’t say graves; it sends shivers through me. Hold me, Edward; I’m so frightened of losing you.”
There was a fire still burning in the fireplace, sending its warm glow and flickering light across the room.
We lay there, naked, the warm firelight caressing every soft curve of her body.
We talked.
Then we kissed and clung to each other.
Of all the emotions of my life this moment was the most tender. The feeling of Eadie was the most overwhelming and I blush to recall the strength of its passion.
If time could measure the importance of the moment then, in that night, we should live forever.
How do you reckon eternity?
By the warm glow of the firelight playing on the walls?
By the soft, enfolding glow of that so human flesh?
By the softly murmured sounds Eadie made?
By the fulfilment of our hearts?
Or our oneness with God and all Creation, and the peace that came between us?
We neither moved nor spoke, frightened to break the spell. As long as that warm glow could last we held the flux of Time, we were still one together.
After every such moment the World is changed. How could we be parted now?
***