by Robert Irwin
And with that I was dismissed. Then I sought permission from the Duke to return to England, where I sold my armour, weapons and estate and used the money to build this chapel some distance away from any other habitation.’
When I was allowed to open my eyes again, I saw a little more clearly, though things were blurred and their edges wavered as if I was looking at the world under water. The hermitage did not resemble a chapel at all. Standing outside in the pale sunshine, I could see that the hermitage was a pleasant-seeming little cottage with timbered walls and a neatly thatched roof. Piers had an extravagant beard and, though I seemed to see bees in the beard, I put this down to my still faulty vision. That morning I helped in the garden as well as I was able.
In the afternoon, he applied the salve once more and once more I sat with my eyes closed while he talked, ‘Here in my hermitage, since I am withdrawn from the great events – the crown wearings, parliamentary assemblies, battles and plague epidemics – I have had the sense that I understand more clearly how history is made, and so, many years ago, I decided that I would become a historian, but I would not chronicle the past, for there were many learned scholars already engaged in that task. Instead I would become and indeed have become an historian of the future.’
This time I interrupted him, ‘An historian of the future? How is that possible? How can you make a record of things that have not happened yet?’
‘It seems to me that it is no more difficult to research the future than the past, for how do we know about the past? Only through things that are here in the present – ruins, relics and manuscripts. In the same manner, I believe that we can deduce the future from things that are here in the present. So I ask myself what must the future be like, given that things are here as they are now? The world around us – the stars, the growth of trees and plants, the faces of men and women, the shifting watercourses – all tell us the way the world is going.’
I was obstinate, ‘You cannot make records of things that have not happened.’
‘Oh, yet I know what will happen to you and what your end will be,’ he said, but after that he would not argue with me and he just sat beside me muttering to himself. At last it was time for me to open my eyes again and this time I saw things clearly. Indeed I thought that I saw more clearly than before, since things appeared sharper edged and more solid. Now Piers was able to show me properly round his garden, with its carefully tended rows of vegetables, its orchard and its beehives. The bees in the beard had not been an hallucination. From time to time he amused himself by strapping the queen bee in a cage under his chin and by this means he was able to attract a great swarm of bees to his beard.
The following morning he took me into the garden again and made a sweeping gesture with his arms to encompass it all.
‘Don’t go to London. Join me here and tend the rows of beans, collect fruit, listen to the bees and join me in fishing from the river. It is quiet here. Step out of history.’
But I was young and not ready to retire from life. Just before I was about to ride off I leant down from my saddle and said to Piers, ‘I think that, on your honour as a knight, you should have embraced the lady with the cancerous breast and given her comfort in any way you could.’
‘I know,’ he said sadly.
Then I rode back into history.
I found my men who had made very slow progress for they were still a little way short of Newcastle. They had missed me and feared that I had been killed by robbers. But I was astounded to hear that they were sure that I had only been gone for part of a day and a night. This was certainly wrong and I wondered if it was possible that my place had been taken by a phantom horseman who had impersonated me. I had no further adventures. My troop disbanded on the edge of Norfolk and I rode on to London.
Ripley looks anxiously at Anthony as he reads all this. Though Anthony keeps control of his face, he is angry at many things. He is most annoyed that Ripley has kept hardly anything of his own story. He does not like the hint that he has been afraid of the wolf. He does not want to wash a leper’s feet, still less drink the water afterwards. He does not want to wear a hair shirt covered with lice. He would much rather have made love to the lady of the castle, instead of kneeling before her and begging to be flogged. He does not like Piers to lecture him like a schoolboy and Piers’ confidence that he knew how Anthony would die seemed oddly like a threat. He thinks that Ripley’s story is cruel, for in it he was much abused and suffered unreasonably. Also it was hard on his old friend Andrew Trollope that he should have his eyes clawed out. And, in any case, can he really trust Ripley, a man of whom Warwick has spoken well? Yet none of this shows on Anthony’s face.
Instead he says, ‘This is a remarkable story, but it is so remarkable that no one will believe it.’
‘Why should they not?’ replies Ripley. ‘There is a church in Evesham which guards as a holy relic the hole in the ground in which the cross of the Crucifixion was placed and in Carlisle they venerate the bones of St Francis as they were when he was a boy of thirteen. If people can believe such things, then surely they can believe our story about the finding of the gerfalcon?’
Then, seeing that Anthony looks dubious, Ripley tries another tack.
‘No, most people will not swallow this tale whole, but they will believe that some of it may be true, and remember that this is only the first of many stories that we shall circulate about you. It is a matter of drip, drip, drip.’
‘I shall deny what you claim ever happened to me.’
‘Then people will only think that you are being very modest. So much the better.’
‘I am amazed that you have invented such a strange story,’ says Anthony.
‘My dear lord, I did not invent it all,’ Ripley replies. ‘I steal other men’s stories… Now I have work to do and I am sure that you should go away and resume your exercising with the sword and lance. And remember this. The lady of the castle was right. You are the hero of your story. I, on the other hand, am in the shadows of that story.’ And he continues wistfully, ‘Knights and lords can become heroes, but no one has ever heard of an heroic alchemist and no alchemist has ever gazed upon the Grail. Please remain my friend, for all shall be well, all things shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’
Chapter Seven: Wedding
Centuries ago a young King went hunting in a forest. He became separated from his companions and while still lost, he came to a river on the bank of which he encountered a beautiful woman with blonde hair and the look of an elf about her. She offered to show him the way out of the forest…
Anthony remembers that, when they were little, he and his older sister Elizabeth used to listen to fairy stories told to them by their mother. According to her, fairy stories are stories which fairies tell about themselves and it was Jacquetta’s fairy blood, by virtue of her descent from Melusine, which licensed her to tell such stories. Her eyes rolled and she summoned up her stories as if she were calling on angels or demons to present themselves. Indeed she believes that every story has its own spirit and they are urgent in seeking storytellers who can tell them accurately and well. She mostly told stories about beautiful maidens who married Kings or Princes. According to Jacquetta, both Elizabeth and Anthony had been born ugly, but she reassured them that she had got her cat, Bastet, to lick the ugliness out of them and, since they were both now quite beautiful, they would surely feature in their own fairy tales when they were older.
Anthony reflects that, if his life is turning into any kind of tale, then it is a strange one. Ever since the Battle of Palm Sunday, nothing has been normal and he toys with the notion that he was indeed killed at that battle and, instead of returning to life, he now inhabits an afterlife which presents him with a diabolic and flawed simulacrum of living reality. Again and again he finds his way taking him down hitherto unvisited paths. Familiar objects, once he closely examines them, dissolve into things that are strange and threatening. Surely it cannot continue like this? He wishes that he
could return to the easy certainties of his boyhood.
Anthony is glad to return to Scales Hall. Though his wife embraces him passionately, her first words are full of mockery, for, of course, Beth has recognised the rumours Ripley has been putting about regarding Anthony’s asceticism, his resistance to erotic temptation and the vision of the Grail for the fantasies that they all are. She feels under the tabard just to make sure that there is no hair shirt and she whispers in his ear inquiring whether he would like her to give him a good flogging.
He finds that a parcel of books has been sent by Tiptoft to await his arrival, including one he had requested on the construction of circles of protection. Since frequent ‘vigils’ in the nearby church would be looked upon by the locals as suspicious, he proposes to Beth that they spend the night together within a magic circle under the protection of its four angels. Beth knows nothing of magic. Nevertheless she agrees, for she likes danger and adventure, or at least she thinks she does. Moreover, she is bored with travelling to distant churches and coupling on cold stone floors. They shall see what the night shall bring them.
It is past midnight when Anthony begins his conjuration in the solar. But first he has servants create a temporary bed consisting of a thick layer of rushes covered by a blanket and cushions. Then he uses sticks of charcoal to mark out the circle of protection with the names of the guardian angels Talvi, Casmaran, Ardarel and Farlas inscribed inside and he places lighted candles at those four points, though he does not trouble to mark out the traverses which a swordsman might make. Then he leads Beth into the circle and they undress. But no sooner have they done so, than the bloodied Earl of Wiltshire appears in the doorway. Though dead and gashed about he is still curiously handsome.
Beth screams and Anthony shouts, ‘Go away! In the name of God, I conjure you to go.’
Wiltshire does not reply, but looks behind him. Other figures are filing through the door. There is Sir Andrew Trollope and Anthony’s sister’s late husband, Sir John Grey, and there are a few others he recognises, men who failed to survive the Battle of Palm Sunday, but there are many more that he could not remember seeing before and it may be that some fell in earlier battles. There are also a few women in the crowd. Beth is hurrying to get dressed again, but she is in such a panic that her tunic and under-tunic are in a horrible tangle. By now the solar is full and the circle is surrounded, but it seems that there are others outside the solar who are trying to force their way in. Those at the front, just outside the circle of protection, keep moving their legs as if they were still advancing, though they are unable to break into the protected space.
Wiltshire is the first to speak, ‘We mean you no harm. We come in good fellowship.’
‘You are one of us,’ says another, addressing Anthony.
‘You are very beautiful,’ says a third to Beth. ‘We like looking at you.’
‘Your wife is beautiful, is she not?’ says Wiltshire to Anthony.
Now there is a regular clamour of voices.
‘We only want to watch.’
‘She has beautiful thighs.’
‘And lips like rubies.’
‘You lucky dog.’
‘We like watching. It is good to look on the love of a man for a woman.’
Several of the creatures at the front have begun to masturbate, or at least to simulate that act.
‘It is very cold out here. Let us into the circle.’
A trio of women, all very beautiful, though one shows a bloody gash across her breasts, force their way forwards. They call out to Anthony,
‘Let us in Lord Scales. Let us join your wife on the blanket, for we would love you too. We can all be jolly together.’
But the men, on the contrary, are now urging Anthony to come out from the circle and join them in their feast.
By now the press is such that naked corpses are scaling the walls and crawling upside down on the ceiling. The floorboards under Anthony and Beth are creaking and bulging as someone or something pushes at them from below. So it continues for over an hour, before the voices begin to turn nasty, ‘Dear lady, surely you know that your husband is not a living human. He is one of us. That is why we are here.’
‘Nothing can come from his seed – nothing good at least.’
‘It is a damnable thing for a woman to surrender herself to a corpse. The end of it is eternal perdition.’
‘He really is one of us and once he has had his way with you, he will break the circle and let us have our turn, will you not, my lord? You promised us. Share and share alike.’
Anthony seeing that Beth is gazing raptly at the mob of corpses, tries to draw her round to face him.
‘Pull away,’ he begs her. ‘Pull away. Do not look at them.’
Then he tries to cover her eyes, but she pushes his hands away. He is losing her. He crawls under the blanket and calls to her, ‘Beth, as you love me, join me here.’
She does not answer, but the dead reply, ‘She is ours.’
The creatures outside the circle have reverted to flattering her and praising her beautiful flesh. At the same time others threaten and abuse Anthony. So he puts his head under the blanket and claps his hands over his ears, but he still hears the voices.
‘There can be no escape. We dead are always watching, watching and judging even when you cannot see us. We shall always be in your thoughts.’
‘We are your thoughts. We live inside your head. Inside or outside of the circle, we are in your head.’
‘Hell is too crowded. So we have come to live with you.’
Anthony takes to singing and babbling loudly in order to drown out the threats and insinuations. Towards dawn, the numbers of the watchful dead diminish somewhat. At the last they are attended on only by Wiltshire and a couple of his comrades, but then as the nearby church’s bells begin to peal, summoning the village to Sunday worship, the three of them stumble away and the sound of their wailing in the distance is soon drowned by the noise of the bells. Anthony, more tired than he has ever been in his life, now falls asleep to their tolling.
He is awoken by something damp on his face. He opens his eyes and sees that it is spittle from Beth’s mouth. She is crouched and drooling over him and there is a vacant look in her eyes as if she does not know what she is looking at. Those eyes now never blink.
In the days that follow all manner of remedies are tried, starting with bloodletting and cupping, followed by purges, then an exorcism carried out by the parish priest, and this is followed by sweatings in hot baths, a diet of eggs and wine, and readings from the lives of the saints. Beth suffers it all without speaking or blinking.
Anthony writes a careful account of the horrid ordeal and sends it to Ripley and he asks him for advice on how Beth can be cured. He is infuriated when Ripley, in reply, has no suggestions to make with regard to Beth’s malady. But among other improvements to the narrative of the ordeal, Ripley suggests that there should be a goat-headed devil in charge of the corpses and that those outside the circle should produce an angelic child, the son of one of the household servants, and then they should threaten to slit the child’s throat as a sacrifice to the goat-headed devil, unless Anthony steps outside the circle. But Anthony, Elizabeth and the little child will be rescued when the four angels whose names are inscribed in the circle manifest themselves. It seems that Ripley has difficulty in separating reality and fantasy.
Finally, Anthony reluctantly escorts Beth to a convent outside York where she will be confined and carefully tended. Her soul has travelled elsewhere. The ride back to Scales Hall is a melancholy business. The nuns will write if there is any sign of a recovery.
Anthony does not return to London until shortly before Pentecost. When he presents himself at court, he finds that some men look on him strangely and that the ladies, in particular, are careful to keep their distance from him and it is some time before he realises that this must be because Ripley’s account of the unwashed and verminous hair shirt has after all attained some credence. God k
nows what else people believe.
The presentation of the gerfalcon takes place at the entrance to the Palace of Westminster at noon on the day of Pentecost. The bird had been brought up from its place of concealment in a mews in Woking on the previous day. Anthony advances with the massive hooded bird on his glove and carefully hands it over to the keeping of the King’s head falconer. Edward formally thanks him for undertaking this difficult quest and bringing it to a successful conclusion. Only Edward, Anthony, Hastings and Ripley know that this business is a charade, though others may have their suspicions. Edward, standing beside his falconer, has difficulty in concealing his irritation at having been persuaded by Ripley to go along with this imposture. As far as Edward is concerned, Anthony is still the young man who was killed fighting for Henry of Lancaster at Towton and then came back to life. So Anthony is a freak of nature, like Tiptoft’s dwarf, Chernomor.
The crowd who look on are mostly puzzled. Anthony has been carefully vague about how he tracked down the bird and won it back and he hopes his vagueness will be taken for modesty. His story is that long searching led him to a castle in a remote part of northern England. There he had to undergo a series of tests before the lord of the castle would allow him to take away the bird. Meanwhile Ripley’s intelligencers have been spreading the more detailed and fantastical story of Anthony’s encounter with a maimed King, his fight with dead men, his resistance to the temptation of Dame Discipline de la Chevalerie and his vision of the Grail, but, as Anthony had expected, few people believe this and, when Anthony is asked if he has seen the Grail, he firmly denies it.
The Earl of Warwick is the leader of those who mock this ceremony.
‘The dead do not walk,’ he loudly declares.
But Jacquetta is standing close by and she points a bony finger at him, ‘A man who does not believe in ghosts is on the way to godlessness,’ she says, ‘Since from there it is but a short step to not believing in God’s power to work miracles and from there then another short step to not believing in God Himself.’