Paradise Walk

by Mary Malloy

  “Why didn’t you say anything about this before?” Kate asked.

  “It changes my notion of my self in a strange way.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Just think what Jackie would say if she knew I had such an aristocratic pedigree!”

  Kate smiled. “Ah, I see what you mean. She can barely stand that I have an English name!”

  “Those things shouldn’t matter, but they do, not only in how others place us into preconceived categories, but how we position ourselves in relationship to other people. The Irish immigrant identity has a rather large component of hating the English aristocracy, so it was a bit of a jolt to suddenly find myself living in both camps.”

  “Do you find that you identify with them now?”

  “It wasn’t at all difficult to believe that Edmund Hatton and I are related. He was a soul mate from early on, but I have no emotional attachment to the rest of it.”

  They continued the conversation as they went into the church, where a number of the memorial monuments honored the wealthy dead by recommending them to God and posterity in doting terms.

  “You see that there isn’t much recognition here of the eye-of-the-needle idea,” Lizzie said.

  She led Kate to the left aisle and pointed out the small carving that had covered the heart of John d’Hautain. “This was his comrade in the Crusades,” she said, indicating the carved effigy adjacent to it. “William Longespèe the Younger. They both died in Egypt.”

  Like Wells Cathedral, which had so impressed Lizzie with its elegant simplicity, Salisbury Cathedral was open from one end to the other. All of the principal features, including the main body of the church and the carving-covered west front, were built in the thirteenth century, with the fabulous steeple being completed in the first decade of the fourteenth. All of it was there when the Weaver made her pilgrimage.

  “I wonder what she left here?” Lizzie said, almost to herself.

  “Is there any way to know after such a long time?” Kate asked.

  “Only if someone has spotted her mark, I think.”

  She had not yet showed the pictures of the tapestry to Kate and now she pulled them out of their envelope and handed them to her one by one.

  “Here is how she depicted Salisbury Cathedral,” she said as she gave her the appropriate photo.

  Kate studied it for a moment and then looked up and around the church. The late afternoon sun was streaming through the windows in slanted rays.

  “Look at how the sun enters here,” Kate said, nudging Lizzie.

  “I know, it’s beautiful,” she said. “Such an ethereal quality.”

  “Yes, but that’s not what I mean. In the picture you just gave me, the church has stained glass windows.” She handed the picture back to Lizzie. “Are you sure this picture is of Salisbury Cathedral and not one of the other churches along the route? Because I only see one stained glass window in this building, and it looks very modern.”

  There was a tiny woven banner that declared ‘Salisbury’ under the image on the tapestry, and Lizzie pointed it out to Kate. “This is definitely Salisbury.”

  “Well then either the artist made a mistake, or the windows have been replaced since this picture was made.”

  “How interesting,” Lizzie said, puzzling over it. “I know that there have been a lot of alterations here over the centuries. Certainly the stained glass is emphasized in this illustration in a way that makes it distinctive from the other places on the tapestry, and there is the Weaver’s mark,” she said, putting her finger under the tiny monogram.

  None of the guidebooks available in the cathedral answered their question about the stained glass, and so it had to wait until the next day and their appointment with Nora Stanley.

  Chapter 24

  In 1789 the architect James Wyatt undertook a three-year project to improve Salisbury Cathedral. He tore down a separate belfry that had stood beside the cathedral for five hundred years, as well as two small chapels that had been added later; he lined up all the graves inside the church on a “plinth” to define the side aisles up the nave; he removed all of the exterior grave stones to drain the marshy area around the cathedral and create the expansive lawns that now surround it; and he replaced the surviving thirteenth-century stained glass with clear panes.

  Nora Stanley told all this to Lizzie and Kate as they sat on uncomfortable chairs in her cramped office. Lizzie had shown her the picture of Salisbury Cathedral as it appeared on the tapestry strip map and she instantly recognized the features that had been changed, including the stained glass.

  “You’ve hit on something here, Lizzie,” Nora said. “Since you contacted me a few weeks ago I have been looking through our records for references to an AW monogram and I found one.”

  “A stained glass window?”

  “Yes, in fact it is.”

  Lizzie clapped her hands with pleasure. “I knew it! As soon as you pointed out the colored windows on the tapestry, Kate, I knew that had to be it! Can we see it?”

  Nora looked at her patiently. “Those windows are, I’m sorry to say, long gone.”

  The disappointment on Lizzie’s face was obvious.

  “I can show you a drawing of them, though,” Nora added. “Fortunately, there was someone here when the windows were removed who had the foresight to think of this moment.” She pushed a large folder across the desk and Lizzie opened it carefully.

  On large sheets of stiff paper, the arch-topped outlines of dozens of windows were drawn in pen. Each of them was divided into panes and in each pane the lines where lead had been used to bind together cut pieces of colored glass were carefully delineated. Small notations along the side of each window indicated what the colors were. Lizzie scanned each page and turned it over onto Nora’s desk.

  “The pages are numbered in the upper right corner,” Nora said. “You are looking for page five.”

  When she turned over that page, Lizzie saw a window that depicted the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. At the top was Becket as archbishop, sitting on his throne with all the regalia of his office. Below it was an image not unlike the one on the reliquary in which the Weaver’s journal had been found. Four knights with raised swords were captured at the moment of murdering Becket. He was shown kneeling at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral, his hands lifted in prayer. One of the swords was imbedded in his head, slicing through the crown and severing that part where his tonsure was shaved. In the next panel down, Becket was being lowered into a tomb, and below that was an interesting image that Lizzie had never seen before. She asked Nora if she knew what it was.

  “That is the great shrine of Thomas Becket. It was built when his bones were translated from the original grave some fifty years after his death, and it was destroyed at the time of the Reformation. There are only a few images of it that survive.” She handed Lizzie a photocopy of an article. “The reason I was able to locate the signature monograph you asked about is because it appears on that window and there have been Becket scholars who have written about it. This is a good article, and I have written a link to another on the top of it. ”

  The fact that the Weaver’s signature appeared on a stained glass window depicting the life, death and reburial of Thomas Becket was incredibly exciting to Lizzie. She looked for the monogram and saw where it appeared in the drawing. It had a prominent place in the center of the bottom edge of the window, the flat-topped A clearly drawn over the lines of the W.

  Lizzie breathed deeply. “This is simply unbelievable,” she said. “I never expected anything so wonderful.”

  “It must have been pretty expensive to have a window like that made,” Kate said as she moved to see the image on the page more clearly.

  “Yes indeed,” Nora said. “I think that there might be information about that in the article.”

  “Can I get a picture of this?” Lizzie asked.

  “I anticipated that question,” Nora said, handing her the last folder on the desk. “These are co
pies of the photographs that were taken to be included in one of the articles.”

  That night at their hotel, Lizzie called Alison to tell her about the window, and then called Martin to ask about progress on the mural and tell him her discovery. He was especially interested in the nature of the Weaver’s gifts to churches along her track.

  “So she commissioned tapestry weavers, a stone carver, and a stained glass maker to create these various offerings that she made?”

  “She must have.”

  “I think that is very interesting. She could have just donated one of her own weavings to each place; the fact that she didn’t means she wanted to be a patron of other artists.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but you must be right,” Lizzie said, delighted at the thought. “Weaving and widowhood had obviously made her very rich. I’m not sure about the stone carving, but the tapestry and stained glass window were probably done by a workshop of artisans under a master and very expensive.”

  “Maybe she traded her work for theirs. From what you say she was a talented designer as well as being an expert weaver.”

  “I’m reminded of the times you have commissioned work from other artists, including the bronze plaque at the Henge-ment church, which is your design but made by someone who works in a different medium.”

  “I suspect that has been a practice among artists and artisans for centuries. These works of art she commissioned—were they all made as gifts for churches?”

  Lizzie said she wasn’t sure for whom the tapestry was intended. “It was still in the family when Alison’s father was a kid, so I think not that one. But I’m beginning to suspect that she had something made for each of the cathedrals along the path of her pilgrimage. I found the ones at Wells and Salisbury; Glastonbury and Shaftesbury are total ruins, but Jackie is looking to see if anything can be located that was taken at the time of Henry VIII’s destruction of the shrines. That leaves Winchester, Westminster and Canterbury, and I’ll be at all three soon.”

  Martin reported that his mural was going to be completed on schedule and the dedication would be at the end of the following week. Lizzie promised that nothing would keep her from being there.

  When she hung up the phone, she shared Martin’s idea about the Weaver as an art patron with Kate.

  “You are very lucky in your friends and relations, Lizzie,” Kate responded. “You have a librarian on hand when you need expertise on books, and when you want to know how an artist thinks, you just call the one you happen to be married to.” She lamented that her area of expertise was unlikely to come into play on a long walk.

  Her comment reminded Lizzie of the two pages of astronomical calculations that had been tucked into the books at Alison’s house.

  “On the contrary, dear friend!” she said, going to her file to retrieve them. “I have a puzzle that requires the knowledge of a navigator.” She put the papers on the desk and asked Kate what they were.

  “These are notes on the declination of the sun on two different days of the year,” Kate said after a quick glance at the first lines of the top page. “It is probably copied directly out of a nautical almanac.” She spoke as if this was no mystery at all. “And someone has calculated the arithmetical mean to determine local apparent noon.”

  “Why would someone want to know that?”

  Kate shook her head. “Not sure. There are two latitudes here, and something else, which seems to be calculations to adjust for altitude at the first location—544 feet, and then adds twelve feet above that.”

  “And why would someone do that?”

  “Well, if this person was using a nautical almanac, the tables are set up for observations from sea level; on a vessel we calculate it when we shoot the sun at noon. On my ship, St. Brendan’s Curragh, if I don’t consider the height of my eye above the surface as I stand on the deck, I can throw off my fix by 3.4 miles.”

  She pulled out the map of England and using the side of an envelope, drew two straight lines. “These latitudes are close together and not far from where we are now. They are both 51 degrees north; one is at 13 minutes and the other at 16 minutes.” She ran a finger along the first line. “It’s kind of close to Wells, where I remember you said you were, and it runs just south of some place called Guildford.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “Smack on Canterbury, and there really isn’t any other major town on that line. Bath is slightly further north, London is well north, Salisbury and Winchester are south.

  “What about the dates?” Lizzie asked. “Are they important?”

  “I’m sure they were important to someone,” Kate said pragmatically, “or they wouldn’t have bothered.”

  Lizzie pulled the paper back toward herself. “July 7 and December 29. What could they mean?”

  Again Kate said that they could be anything.

  “Canterbury,” Lizzie said. “Of course that’s the destination of the pilgrimage.”

  “Yours or hers?”

  “Both. Well, mine because of hers.”

  “And on July seventh we know the declination of the sun there will be 22 degrees and 45 minutes north.”

  “And then what?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Chapter 25

  Thomas Becket was born in London in 1118 and went to work for the Archbishop of Canterbury when he was twenty-one years old. He subsequently studied law and theology on the continent and when he returned to England was appointed archdeacon of Canterbury. A tall and charismatic individual, Becket clearly stood out among the men of his age. When Henry II was crowned in 1154, the Archbishop recommended Becket to the young king and he was made chancellor, in which position he became Henry’s ally and friend. When Henry tangled with the pope over control of church affairs in England, Becket stood strongly with the king. In 1162 Henry thought that he could gain the reins of the church in England if he had Thomas Becket named Archbishop of Canterbury. If Becket was both archbishop and chancellor, the powers of church and state would be consolidated, and Henry would be able to stand up to the pope. Becket did not seek the position and vainly attempted to persuade Henry to choose another candidate.

  Once he was appointed, Thomas Becket had something of a conversion experience. He became a zealous defender of the Catholic Church, resigned his position as chancellor, and devoted his considerable energy and talent to fighting the king over who would control the church in England. Many of the stands that Becket took were petty; he would not agree that minor clerks in the church should stand trial in the civil courts for crimes committed among the populace. Henry was also petty, eventually even accusing Becket of having embezzled funds during his chancellorship.

  They were the two most powerful men in England, not only by virtue of their offices, but by the strength of their personalities; they were former confidantes, they were also highly visible celebrities. When Henry ordered Becket to appear in court, not as the Archbishop of Canterbury, but in a civil action, Becket refused, left England and headed to Rome for papal support. Such support was a long time coming and then only in name. Becket remained in exile in France for six years while he and Henry blasted away at each other from either side of the Channel. Henry persecuted Becket’s family; Becket excommunicated half of England just for speaking to Henry.

  In 1170 the king had his oldest son, Henry, crowned by the Archbishop of York, to secure the succession. Becket was furious and excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London for having participated. (English kings, by tradition, were always crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury.) Henry and Becket finally met in France in July of that year, each made some concessions, and Becket returned to England on the first of December. The public acclaim at his return was compared (after his death) to that given to Christ on his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

  Henry was still in France and fed up with the whole business. In the presence of several members of his court he muttered the immortal words: “Will no one rid me of this troubl
esome priest?” Four knights immediately crossed the channel and made their way to Canterbury: Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Breton. Becket was warned but would not hide. On December 29, 1170, he went from his dinner to the church for the vespers service and was followed by the knights.

  It was five o’clock in the evening when the knights rushed into the church. There were a number of monks there for the service, and a small crowd, having heard the commotion, followed the king’s men into the nave. Becket violently resisted their attempts to take him prisoner; he swore at the knights, not just as the Archbishop of Canterbury but as their social superior. Tracy swung at him with his sword but Edward Grim, one of the monks of the Cathedral, deflected the blow from Becket by taking the force of it on his arm. Becket’s scalp was grazed and began to bleed. When he saw the blood Becket said, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” Another sword blow brought him to his knees and from there prostrate to the floor. Richard le Breton then delivered a blow to Becket’s head so forceful that it severed the cap of his skull, instantly killing him and breaking the blade of the sword on the pavement.

  Hugh of Horsea, a fifth knight who had joined the party as they came into the cathedral, then put his foot upon the neck of Becket’s corpse and put the tip of his sword into the exposed brain matter, scattering it out onto the pavement. “Let us go, let us go,” he said as he finished, “The traitor is dead; he will rise no more.”

  After the knights clattered out of the cathedral there must have been profound silence, though there were numbers of witnesses. Finally Osbert, Becket’s servant, went to his master and bound the severed piece of his head back on with a strip of his shirt. Others began to come out of the darkness. The floor was soaked with brains and blood and the people in the church began to soak them up with pieces of cloth; some are said to have dipped their fingers in the blood and smeared it on their faces. Becket’s body was carried to the high altar and bowls were placed beneath it to catch his blood. They knew he was a martyr. They knew he would be a saint. The collecting of his relics began instantly upon his death. The blood was put into small bottles called ampullae or phials. It would work miracles for centuries.