Wonders Will Never Cease

by Robert Irwin

  But Anthony disagrees, ‘The water fairy has been waiting for Hagen so that she may confirm his courage. We are being told that Hagen is a hero who is undaunted in the face of certain death. The deaths of swineherds, shepherds, pie vendors and porters are not foretold by fairies or wizards. To be the victim of a prophecy is one of the marks of a hero.’

  The Bastard nods gratefully to Anthony and continues, ‘Hagen agreed that this was an evil future foretold and what he had feared would happen, but since he is not to be deterred from proceeding further, the water fairies guided him to a ferryman a few miles upstream and he in his turn guided Gunther and his men to this ferry. When all the men were across Hagen destroyed the boat so that there could be no return.

  Attila was a noble and generous Hun and at first they were royally received at his court, though it is true that some squabbles developed between the squires and servants of both nations. Even so, when Gunther and his senior knights sat down to dine with Attila and his queen in the great hall on Midsummer’s Eve, all seemed well. Now Kriemhild did not wish things to be well and therefore she summoned her son Ortlieb to the table. The proud father Attila invited Hagen to admire the youth who was so handsome, strong and valiant.

  ‘He will be King one day.’

  Then Attila asked Hagen to take the boy with him when he goes back to Burgundy and supervise his growth to manhood. He would become a fine companion of arms for Hagen.

  But Hagen replied, ‘Were he to grow to manhood this might be so, but the young Prince has an ill-fated look. You will never see me ride to court to wait on Ortlieb.’

  Attila and his courtiers were dismayed by these words, and Kriemhild sensed that the time of her vengeance was near. She whispered to the boy, ‘If you are brave, go up to Hagen and strike him a great blow on the cheek’. The innocent boy did as she suggested whereupon Hagen cut off his head, declaring as he did so, ‘I have been sitting over my food too long.’

  At this point, one of Hagen’s comrades-in-arms came staggering into the dining hall. His sword was drawn and blood streamed over his armour.

  He cried out, ‘We need your strong arm, brother Hagen. I cry out injury to you, for our knights and squires have been attacked and slaughtered in their quarters.’

  And so there was fighting in the great hall and throughout the castle. Attila’s knights were too many for the Burgundian knights and they were all slain. Hagen and Gunther were the last to be taken. Kriemhild beheaded Gunther with Siegfried’s sword and Hagen said, ‘It is all exactly as I foresaw.’ Then she beheaded him too. But Kriemhild did not live long to exult in her vengeance, for horrified at all the slaughter she had brought about, Attila ordered that she be executed for this atrocity. The King’s high festival had ended in sorrow, as joy must ever turn to sorrow in the end.’

  The Bastard has related this tale of death and doom with relish. But when he finishes his story, Edward expresses puzzlement, ‘Why do most of those listening to you want Hagen to survive? He was a murderer. Kriemhild’s revenge was just and yet most at this table wanted him to escape it. Personally I believe in the virtue of vengeance, as Warwick and Clarence may find out one day.’

  And Richard, who does not care for romances and only reads the lives of saints, chimes in, ‘Yes, why should we care what happened to Hagen? He does not exist. He never existed, except as a string of words that have issued from Sir Antoine’s mouth.’

  The Bastard is uncomfortable. He is sure that Hagen must have existed. He is the only famous Burgundian – apart, that is, from St Libert of Saint Trond.

  But Anthony, too, has a complaint, ‘A story should be more like a painting, so that we can gaze upon the people in it and the land that they inhabit. Was Kriemhild beautiful? Was Hagen ugly? What does Hungary look like? The dreadful deeds you have told us about seem to have been carried out in a great fog.’

  And Richard is not going to let the matter go. He argues that not only is the story of the Nibelungs the story of people who never existed, but it is the story of imaginary, unpleasant and murderous people. The only good person in the story is Attila and he is rewarded for that by losing his wife and son. Now the argument becomes heated and Hastings, Say and Gruthuyse join in. There is widespread agreement among these lords that, despite what Richard says, Edward is right and the taking of vengeance is a virtuous act. Anthony is particularly set upon avenging the execution of his father. Let there be peace, yes, but vengeance must come first.

  Then Edward says, ‘Hagen wanted fame more than a long life.’

  ‘What fame is there in killing a child like Ortlieb?’ is Richard’s response and he continues, ‘I have heard how at Southampton the Earl of Worcester had two boys hung, drawn and quartered. Surely that was a dreadful deed and God soon punished the Earl for it.’ Richard smiles briefly, before continuing. ‘The Earl used to stroke my hump. He said it was for luck. Well, it seems that he did not stroke it often enough.’

  ‘But in the end all men are punished by God, for we all die,’ says Anthony. ‘Tiptoft’s end was, like Hagen’s, a brave one. We are all here under sentence of death. Our only hope is to make a brave exit.’

  ‘Except perhaps you, for after being killed at the Battle of Palm Sunday, you came back from death,’ Edward points out and Anthony sees that now everyone is looking at him as if he is some kind of freak.

  ‘No, we shall all die,’ says Anthony. ‘And since England is lost, we shall all die on a foreign shore.’

  At this, Edward and Richard start to weep and Anthony and most of those at the table follow them in this. Then Edward rises and the noble lords, sad and confused, follow him out of the dining hall. As Anthony walks out, he thinks that in a day or two he will seek Edward’s permission to leave him and go on a pilgrimage. He does not want to die in Holland. Jerusalem would be better.

  But suddenly there is better news from England. Since Warwick has pledged himself to the service of Lancaster, he is obliged to give the Lancastrian lords back their lands and this forces him to dispossess some of his supporters, who as Yorkists had been granted Lancastrian lands and titles by Edward. And there is more. Louis has decided that time is ripe for an attack on Burgundy and Warwick is obliged to join him in the alliance against Duke Charles. The impending war with Burgundy is not popular with Londoners or those in East Anglia who are engaged in the cloth trade.

  After only a few days the Great Bastard of Burgundy reappears in The Hague with a different message from Charles. Now the Duke will provide Edward with ships, money and mercenaries, and he is pressing Edward to invade England as soon as possible.

  Chapter Fourteen: Barnet

  They set sail from Flushing on a small fleet of boats provided by Duke Charles. Storms separate the ships and Anthony’s flotilla touches the English coast at Powle. Having waded ashore, he throws himself on the pebbled beach and kisses it. Then he leads his troops south to Ravenser, at the mouth of the Humber, where Edward’s ships rest in what remains of its harbour. Edward has already been reunited with the men from Richard of Gloucester’s ships. Their venture is uncertain and the day feels ominous to Anthony, for Ravenser is bleak. The town was abandoned in 1362 after the Great Drowning of Men and most of it is now under water with only a spire showing above the grey rolling waves. Yet Edward standing on the narrow spit of sand, which is all that remains of Ravenser’s land, seems reinvigorated. He is eager for a fight and Anthony thinks that he has lost a little weight.

  But they have landed in the north where Lancastrian support is strongest, and if Edward proclaims that he has come back to reclaim his crown, he will meet with nothing but hostility in these parts. Therefore Edward puts it about that he has only come to take back the Duchy of York which is his by right of inheritance from his father. When Edward reaches Northampton he is joined by four thousand supporters of Lord Hastings. A little later he encounters Clarence on the road. Clarence kneels before Edward and begs forgiveness. Edward raises him up and the two brothers exchange a kiss of peace. There is no sign of
Warwick. Though he has instructed London to hold out against Edward, it does not and Edward rides in triumph to give thanks in St Paul’s. There is no longer any pretence that he is anything other than King of England.

  Outside St Paul’s, Henry is waiting under escort. Edward shakes hands with him and Henry says, ‘My cousin of York, you are very welcome. I know that in your hands my life will not be in danger.’

  Orders are given for Henry to be lodged once more in the Tower, before Edward rides over to Westminster Abbey to be crowned again. Elizabeth and the baby he has not seen before now are waiting for him there. Anthony encounters Ripley coming out of the Abbey. He has the embalmed Head with him, though it will talk no more.

  ‘I am lonely without the Talking Head,’ says Ripley. ‘My lord, will you walk with me in the direction of the Tower? It is marvellous to see you again.’

  Since Anthony is eager to learn what has been happening in England while he was in exile, he agrees. For a while Ripley talks of politics and of the strange coalition of Lancastrians and breakaway Yorkists that has been trying to govern the country until now. Then he starts to speculate about the future, as he is always prone to do. There will have to be a battle to decide things.

  Then Anthony, who has been having recurrent dreams about the Great Sheep that devours all England, remembers that he dreamt last night that Edward took up arms against the Great Sheep, but then he and all his army were destroyed by the baa that flattened men, horses, trees and buildings. He fears it bodes ill for any coming encounter with Warwick. Surely the dream is warning him against going into battle?

  Ripley has no time at all for this, ‘My lord, a man’s honour cannot depend on what he has dreamt. Dreams are fool’s gold. They hold a distorting mirror to the world we must live in. The dream seeks to entertain the sleeping man with stories, but it narrates those stories very badly, for the dream is slapdash and complacent and it can afford to be both of these things as it addresses a man who is asleep, but who does not know that he is asleep and hence he is the dream’s captive. The dreamer is like a man detained in a tavern by an unwelcome acquaintance who insists on telling him a story, even though the acquaintance is so drunk and incompetent that he can get neither the logic nor the details of the story right. The dream does not know how to plot a story and it is unable to fill in the background that would be essential to it. Nor does the dream know how to finish a story, for its narration may build to some great climax like a battle, a coronation, or a magical transformation, but then the dream carries on regardless, as if nothing conclusive has happened. In order to prolong its existence, the dream gabbles away and seizes on a random assortment of people and things in order to feed its gabbling. The dream cannot manage more than the briefest snatches of conversation. It harps excessively on anxiety and embarrassment. My lord, our life is no dream and thank God for that!’

  While saying this Ripley has become heated, Anthony perceives that Ripley’s venom against the dream is occasioned by the fact that Ripley sees the dream as a rival storyteller.

  ‘Well perhaps the stories dreams tell us are not very good,’ says Anthony. ‘But is it not the case that a dream may foretell the future?’

  Ripley cannot agree, ‘It is only in legends and fairy stories that the predictions made by dreams invariably come true. I once dreamt that I became Sultan of Egypt and on another occasion I dreamt that I was turned by magic into a leopard. I think that neither of these dreams is ever likely to come true. Believe me, my lord, the dream has no access to the Secret Library.’

  By now they are close to the Woodville townhouse and so Anthony says farewell to Ripley, who is carrying the Head on to deposit it in Tiptoft’s Museum of Skulls inside the Tower. When Tiptoft first became Constable of England he gave orders that, once the heads of traitors had been embalmed and displayed for a few days on spikes over the gates of London Bridge, then they should be collected and returned to the Tower where they would find a place in his Museum. Nobody knows what the purpose of this Museum is, and now the Earl is dead, he cannot tell them. Indeed his own head occupies pride of place in the Museum which is one of the mysteries of the Tower.

  There is an inscription over the entrance to the Museum:

  La pluie nous a debués et laves,

  Et soleil dessechiés et noircis;

  Pies, corbeax, nous ont les yeux caves,

  Et arraché la barbe et les sourcis.

  Jamais nul temps nous ne sommes assis;

  Puis ça, puis la, comme le varie,

  A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie,

  Plus becquetés d’oiseaux que dés à coudre,

  Ne soiez donc de nostre confrerie;

  Mais priez dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre.

  Tiptoft had translated for Anthony: ‘The rain has washed and scrubbed us; we are dried and blackened by the sun. Magpies and crows have pecked out our eyes and plucked our beards and eyebrows. We are never allowed to rest, but driven this way and that by the changing wind. The birds have pecked at us till we are more pitted than a thimble. So do not join our brotherhood, but pray to God that he will forgive us all.’

  When Tiptoft had told Anthony that it was a verse from La Ballade des Pendus (The Ballad of the Hanged Men) by François Villon, Anthony replied that he knew all about Villon. Tiptoft had seemed surprised and disappointed to hear this.

  Now at the townhouse Anthony is joyously reunited with Black Saladin. But his encounter with his mother is not joyous at all. She too has only just returned to the house after having hidden in a convent for the duration of Henry’s Readeption. Dressed in black satin, Jacquetta seems to be shrinking into its blackness. She mutters dark things about Warwick and others who were his accomplices in the murder of her husband, but then there are other things on her mind.

  ‘They are stealing from me,’ she whispers. ‘Wherever I hide my money, they find it and spirit it away.’

  Who is stealing from her? She cannot say. She has drifted on to another topic.

  ‘The magic is passing out of England,’ she whispers. ‘The days of the great sorceresses, Medea, Morgan le Fay, Nimue and the others whose names I now forget, are long past. Conjurations that were once possible are no longer so. Just a few cantrips can be made. We are of our time and soon our time will be over. Times change and we change in those times. When I am dead (and that is something I long for) there will be yet less magic in the world. The rule of the knights will pass too, for the autumn of chivalry has already arrived. The leaves are turning brown with the clouds.’

  Then having thought of something else, she warns Anthony against Ripley, ‘He is a dabbler who does not really understand what he is dabbling in. He does not realise what consequences his stories may have in the real world. You must not let him in.’ She pauses for a moment and then moves onto yet another thing, ‘Soon they will come for me too and spirit me away. You will seek me, but not find me.’

  She waves Anthony away, but as he leaves the room he can hear that she is still talking to herself. It is not magic that is passing away, but her mind.

  Two days later Edward, having mustered his army just beyond Aldersgate, leads them north-west in search of Warwick’s forces. He judges that it is vital to find and engage with Warwick before Margaret with her Lancastrian and French contingents land in England and join forces with the Earl. Edward has brought the captive Henry of Lancaster along with him, since the deposed King is too precious a pawn to be left behind in London. Ripley is also part of Edward’s retinue and he is said to be there to advise the King on the weather. Ripley is looking forward to a battle, or rather to its aftermath, where he expects to garner a plentiful harvest of eyeballs.

  Two days later, as dusk is falling, Edward’s scourers locate Warwick’s army just beyond the little town of Barnet. Edward leads his army through the silent and darkened town. It is eerie. No drums are beaten, no trumpets blown. There is not even any talking, but only the soft clinking of harnesses and armour. Despite the silence of the Yorkist adva
nce, Warwick knows that they have arrived, even if he cannot be sure of the exact positions they have taken in the darkness, and at first Edward, for his part, is uncertain of the exact dispositions of Warwick and his Lancastrian allies.

  Eventually Edward’s scourers determine where Warwick has carefully placed his men behind thick hedges and drainage ditches. Warwick has brought a huge artillery train with him and soon after the Yorkists have taken up their positions, his cannons start firing. But in the ink-black darkness Warwick and his fellow commanders have not realised how very close the Yorkist line is to the Lancastrian one and consequently the Lancastrian gunners are consistently overshooting their target. Edward gives orders to his artillerymen not to return fire for fear of revealing the Yorkists’ true position. Horses are parked half a mile back, lights are doused and on the rare occasion when a stray ball from a bombard hits one of his men, that man’s companions jump on him to stifle his screams and groans.

  The thunder of artillery makes for a sleepless night. Anthony wishes that the dawn would hurry up. A battle is a strange business. It is as if thousands of men had gathered together outside Barnet to throw dice in order to determine whether they would live or die. So a battle is a gaming house. If Warwick wins here, he takes all. He will have the feeble shadow King Henry back once more.