The Last English King

by Julian Rathbone

  It was, he supposed, the biggest building in Christendom. Certainly the biggest in England. And although its size and grandeur had been apparent almost ever since Walt had first set foot in Westminster or seen it across the bend of the river from London, it had until now always been fenced in, cocooned by a tight cage of scaffolding timbers, wattle hurdles, and surrounded by a shanty town of workmen’s huts and halls. Cranes and hoists had risen above it and remained above it even as it grew, and the smoke of fires and the dust of stone dressed on the site had made a cloud which, in the final stages, had contained too the noxious fumes of smelted lead and copper. Sometimes this cloud darkened the sun, turned it red at noon.

  It was alien, foreign, out of place, an intrusion. It was too big. It was formed out of big blocks of pale grey stone, not far off corpse colour, that had been dragged and trundled and carted from almost the furthest reaches of the kingdom, after first being laboriously cut from deep quarries. A lot of men had died moving, dressing and finally heaping those banal cubes of stone, one on top of another.

  Through the use of giant round pillars, linked by semi-circular arches with galleries of smaller arches above them, it had been possible to raise a roof three, four times higher than any Saxon church and enclose a space big enough to cover a sizeable village. And it had nothing to do with Walt’s people, nor his religion. The men who designed it, who instructed and commanded the Celtic serfs who made it and often died in the making of it, were all French, Normans, speaking their nasal harsh tongue, and arrogant with it. Most of the craftsmen too were Normans, the glaziers, the stone-masons, the lead and copper smiths, though some came from even more distant lands and spoke in tongues entirely foreign.

  The faith it celebrated was Roman, the Pope's and the Emperors, not the people’s. Its tongue was Latin, and not just during the offices and masses. It was said it was a universal language but Walt had come to think of it as a code, something that set aside its users, gave them a power, a belonging, an exclusivity which shut others out. He had a confused sense of an entity beyond the Channel of which Normandy and even Rome itself were merely parts, a Grendel-like monster which could swallow all and make all part of itself. Europe?

  He shuddered again and thought briefly of the churches he had known and felt comfortable in. The best had been no bigger than a thegn's hall, most much smaller, sheds really, wattle and daub filling in timber frames, with floors of impacted red clay, thatched roofs and small altars. And inside, simple things - carved stone and painted plaster that told of Our Lord’s life as if he really had been a man with a real mother and friends, who knew hunger, thirst, and cold, but who also knew of weddings and feasting, a man, in short, you could talk to. He thought of the priests who served such churches, who mumbled a Latin mass they understood scarcely more than you did, but helped you mourn and rejoice in your own language, and in hard times when the cattle died of murrain and the children of agues, forgave the peasants their tithe and even found some cheese or barley of their own to help them out.

  Noise, and a stir in the crowd broke his reverie. From the back of his pony Walt could see the approaching processions. From London down the narrow road that crossed the River Fleet came William, London’s Norman bishop, mounted on a palfrey with a cross and censor in front of him and a choir of chanting monks behind.

  Meanwhile Archbishop Stigand crossed the river from Lambeth in a barge beneath a baldachin of some magnificence. Archbishop of Canterbury, yes, but excommunicated by the Pope. Why? Because, never mind the pluralism and his wives, he was a Saxon and the Kentishmen of Canterbury had driven Robert the Norman out of Canterbury.

  And from the great hall of Westminster, between the abbey church and the river where Stigand would shortly land, carried on a palanquin as magnificent as the archbishop’s, the Queen. Edith. Beneath her snood a simple gold coronet gleamed above deep-set eyes, high cheek-bones. Her hand gloved in white kid, jewelled with gold and amethyst, clutched at the piles of black and grey furs -- bear, beaver, wolf -- that were heaped beneath and over her.

  Harold swung his leg, gartered with leather above thick woollen hose, over the pommel of his saddle, dropped himself with animal grace to the ground and strode towards his sisters palanquin. He was now in his prime -- not the prime of a young man who has thrown off youth, but on the cusp of fullest manhood, the moment before the wheel turns and the descent into old age begins. He too wore a gold circlet in his heavy, grizzled brown hair, a dun tunic beneath a heavy crimson cloak fastened with a brooch in the likeness of a gold dragon intricately shaped. Scabbarded in tooled leather, his heavy broad-sword with its elaborate gold pommel and quills slapped his muscled thigh.

  Walt handed the standard to Daffydd and followed him, respectfully distant but wary too, ready to leap to his aid at the slightest hint of danger.

  At the side of his sister’s litter Harold reached up, took her gloved hand, briefly touched it to his lips. Above it he murmured: ‘The King is too ill to come?’

  ‘He cannot hold his water nor his shit. He stinks.’

  ‘How long before . . .?’

  ‘The Norman doctors, priests, give him until Spring . . .’

  ‘Until the weather’s good enough for the Bastard to make his crossing?’

  Edith shrugged bird-like shoulders beneath her furs.

  ‘The Danish shaman our mother sent has cast his runes and says it will be on the last day of Christmas.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it is as bad as that.’

  The queen pulled back her hand but a tiny smile spread her painted lips as she gave a tiny snort of suppressed laughter.

  Harold looked around him.

  ‘You are poorly guarded for a queen.’

  ‘As sister to the Earl of Wessex I am poorly guarded.’

  ‘Let my house-carls go before and behind you.’

  She shrugged assent and Harold signed to Walt that his body-guard should form up around the Queen.

  William, Bishop of London, hammered on the great door with the stave of his jewelled crazier, and called, in Latin, for all the devils to come out. A smaller door within the great door flew open and a flock of urchins dressed as imps scurried into the icy air. The priests entered the great nave and the chanting of monks rose up and the spaces filled with incense. The Earls of Kent and Anglia, followed by Northumbria and Mercia, entered first, and Harold of Wessex, with the Queen, came last.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Is that you, Morcar?’

  ‘Sire, it is.’

  ‘Come closer. I cannot see you.’

  Morcar moved forward from Edwin’s side. He had to stop himself from pushing his palm into his face, allowing the muscles there to contract in disgust. A miasma surrounded the king - a brew of liquid faeces, urine, incense and the spiced oils the clerks rubbed into knuckles knotted with rheumatism like the boles of a pollarded willow. It was under-cut with something worse, the sickly sweet smell a wound exudes when it does not heal and the flesh rots though the man still lives. The king s feet had gone.

  Morcar glanced back at Edwin and then down the long wide lattice of blackened beams that straddled the low hall, at the fires that burned in the middle at intervals right down to the big doors at the far end, at the shifting tapestries and curtains, which closed off the alcoves where the household slept. He knelt by the pallet, heaped with furs, and kissed the sapphire ring that gleamed somewhere in the knotted fingers, the way a piece of iron or a potsherd can be absorbed and almost grown over by the bark of an ancient tree. The other hand fumbled over a reliquary that lay upon the king’s chest. Carved crystal mounted in gold, it held a sliver of wood from Christ’s Cross.

  ‘Morcar, Earl of Northumbria.’ The old man rumbled, cleared his throat. ‘Come close. I do not wish what we say to be overheard.’

  Morcar pushed his head closer to the old man’s. He looked into watery eyes from which yellow rheum leaked at the corners, and marked how the irises were almost filled with sugary opacity.

  ‘They tel
l me I have not set my seal to the charter that confirms your title. To whom will you swear fealty when I am gone?’

  A tricky question - under the circumstances.

  ‘To the man the Witan chooses.’

  ‘And in whose favour will your voice be heard when the Witan meets?’

  The King stirred and a gust of foetid gas wafted round them. Morcar suppressed the retching fit that threatened him. When one’s rights over a quarter of a kingdom are to be legitimated, one discovers powers of self-denial one did not know one had. Nevertheless, he played safe.

  ‘I shall follow Edwin’s advice. He is my elder brother.’

  Edward the Confessor sighed, or at any rate drew breath over phlegm into rattling lungs.

  ‘These are weasel words. Tell Edwin to approach.’

  Morcar signalled to his brother who knelt beside him and also kissed the ring.

  ‘In whose favour will Edwin’s voice be heard when the Witan meets.’

  ‘Sir, may you live . . .’

  ‘A thousand years? Don’t fool with me, boy.’ A hectic flush briefly coloured the dying man’s cheeks. ‘You cannot give your voice to Harold Godwinson. William, Duke William is the man.’

  The young men remained on their knees, but did not speak.

  Not far away, in the Abbot’s room above the cloister of the abbey church of Westminster, William, Bishop of London, confronted Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex. They waited in silence for the mulled wine William had asked for. He was a tall, lean man, with an ascetic, sculptured face, almost bald apart from a fringe of black hair round his tonsure.

  A monk brought in a silver bowl and horn cups mounted in silver. The air filled with fragrances -- cinnamon and nutmeg.

  ‘You cannot speak on your own behalf, in the Witan. You gave your oath to Duke William that you would be his man and that you would support his rightful claim. A solemn oath sworn on the toe of St Louis and the ring finger of St Denis. Such oaths are not broken lightly.’

  ‘It was, I believe, St Denis’s ear.’

  Bishop William scowled: Harold was being frivolous, impertinent, or both.

  They drank. William scarcely allowed his lips to touch the steaming amber liquid. Harold relished the warmth that spread from his gullet and stomach. He set down the cup, wiped his dark moustache and laughed.

  ‘It was a jape, a trick. The sort of thing old men do to make their grandchildren marvel and laugh. An illusion. The relics were hidden beneath a cloth. Once I had sworn the cloth was whipped away.’

  ‘Even if that were the case, it remains an oath.’

  ‘It was a trick.’ Anger lent more colour to the leathery red of his cheeks. ‘I swore fealty to William on his land, in Normandy, anywhere where he rules by right. Nothing more.’

  ‘When Edward dies this too will be the Duke’s land. If you do not heed your oath you will be excommunicated.’

  ‘It will not be his land until the Witan elects him.’

  ‘What sort of law is this that allows a gaggle of old men and young bloods decide who is king?’

  ‘A good law.’

  ‘Kings are not elected by people. They are chosen by God and by God’s right they reign.’

  ‘And how does God express his will?’

  ‘Through the principle of royalty, through royal blood. William is kin to Edward. You are not. You have not a drop of royal blood in your veins.’

  Harold thought for a moment and let the heat from the cup warm his large, scarred hands. But more than his hands the wine was warming his brain. It was strong stuff and it liberated something deep inside which had been waiting to get out ever since he had heard from his sister that the king was dying. Since his father’s death thirteen years ago he had ruled in England in all but name. Now that was in his grasp, too. He was not greedy for the bauble, but nevertheless he felt a surge of liberation at the thought, a wonderful feeling that at last he would be his own man and no one else’s. He turned away from the prelate and a slow smile spread across his broad face. He gulped off the rest of the wine.

  ‘My Lord Bishop, you have cast the scales from my eyes, shown me the paths of righteousness and the error of my ways.’ There was no apology in his voice; it was, rather, a deep crow of delight. ‘I shall speak at the Witan, but only for royal blood.’

  ‘Explain yourself.’

  ‘I shall speak for Edgar the Atheling, the Prince. Son of Edward the Atheling who was son of Edmund Ironside, who was King of Wessex, and son of Ethelred, King of England. There is no blood more royal in England than that of Edgar, the Prince.’

  The Bishop chewed on the knuckle of his right hand until the bone became red.

  ‘You would give the realm into the care of a fifteen-year-old brat,’ he growled at last.

  ‘Since that seems to be God’s Will, so be it.’

  But the Witan would do no such thing, and both of them knew it.

  On the first of January 1066, the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord, William, Bishop of London, accompanied by his personal chaplain, entered the king’s hall in full penitential procession, with the black-cowled monks of the new Abbey behind him and a magnificent silver censer swung in front. Altar boys carried candles on silver holders draped with the purple of penitence, and the crucifer in front of him carried a wood and ivory crucifix, also draped in purple. He had been told that the king’s lapses into unconsciousness were becoming more frequent and prolonged: it was time to hear the old man’s last confession.

  This did not take much time. Long ago he had been absolved of the grievous sins of his youth and middle-age. Having spent his last years in pious contemplation and good works, and made several confessions of past misdeeds, Edward the Confessor now had little to confess to beyond occasional impatience with the ills of old age and extreme vexation that he had not been well enough to attend the consecration of his Abbey. William pronounced absolution then took the king’s swollen and gnarled old hand in both of his, stroked it gently, and spoke in a quiet and conciliatory voice of the trials and patience of Job, of how Moses was granted sight of the Holy Land but was not permitted to enter it, and so on.

  He then went on to talk of how his holiness the Pope himself knew of and spoke with deep admiration of the old king’s sanctity and good works, of the blamelessness of his life, in recent years, at least, that beatification was already talked of, and of how canonisation must follow. Edward would not be the first king to be sainted for serving the pope and bringing wayward Christians under the holy yoke of Rome. Louis the Pious of France had pre-empted the Day of Judgement and made it to Heaven by the same route.

  ‘One thing remains,’ the bishop concluded, ‘to set the seal on a holy life spent in the service of the true church. To ensure there is no backsliding on the part of the Celts to their old ways, or of the Danes to paganism, in order to be sure that the abuses of the English church are cleaned up, you must name Duke William your successor. His Holiness in Rome has already blessed his claim and it behoves you to do likewise.’

  The furrows between the king’s white brows deepened, though his almost sightless eyes remained expressionless. The bishop leant closer. ‘But I already have,’ he heard the old man mumble.

  ‘But it needs reaffirmation, public reaffirmation if the people are to accept the Duke as their rightful king.’

  The frown deepened. With some irritation the bishop accepted that there was a problem. The Confessor had gone too far down the road of terminal decay to speak or even appear in public. He looked round the long room, at the king’s housecarls and thegns. Particularly he singled out the lean, awkward figure of the Atheling, who, in this time of stress, was sucking his thumb even more voraciously than usual. And he noted the absence of the Earls and their men. Nevertheless, he must do it now -- there might not be a second opportunity. Raising his voice and speaking as solemnly as only a prelate knows how, he announced:

  ‘The king has named his royal cousin Duke William of Normandy to rule in his place. I have heard it from hi
s own lips.’

  He turned on his heel and cruised down the hall, scattering blessings as he went. The monks from the Abbey and the chapter of his own basilica of St Paul’s on Ludgate Hill hurriedly formed up behind him, taking up the miserere nobis from where they had left off.

  On the threshold William paused, breathed in the cold fresh air. Then he shook his head and in tones of refined disgust muttered: ‘That, I must suppose, was the odour of sanctity.’

  Christmas comes but once a year and, in a hall which had once served as the dwelling and offices of the master-builders who had built the abbey, Edwin’s and Morcar’s men caroused. Presently the earls withdrew behind hangings that had separated the master-builder’s office from the rest.

  There was a large, smooth table on which a vellum sheet had been left. Its black ink denoted the way the north tower should be constructed to allow for a belfry, yet to be installed. On it were the subtle instruments that measured angles and a pair of pins joined at the top with an adjustable screw that allowed the master to measure distances across the design.

  There were chairs, too, leather slung across trestles and backed with leather, which they sat in.

  A cheer outside signalled the arrival of a hogshead of brown ale. Presently a youth brought in a jug of it and two cups. Edwin poured out the ale, drank, wiped his thin moustache, and leant back. The room was dark, the only light from a couple of smoking candles, and his face sank into the shadows.

  ‘It’s a bugger, our Morcar. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What then shall we do? Haver and we’re done for. Thing is: we don’t know what sort of deal he cut with Tostig.’

  They’d been through this often enough, but the moment of serious truth was upon them so they went through it again.

  ‘Tostig slipped away so fucking easy, let you put on Northumbria like it was a cloak he’d got tired of.’

  ‘They say he broke up the room he was staying in, and nearly hung one on Harold.’