Now, anyone who has not been to Runnymede meadow will not know how cramped for space it is and never more so than on that sultry June night. Pavilions and marquees were being frantically erected in preparation for the following day’s extravaganza and we were squeezed into one tiny corner - six of us in a tent that was scarcely big enough for two. It was already late when we arrived and we hurriedly intoned the office of compline followed by a light supper of cold pea soup and warm beer and then settled down for the night. But it was not to be a restful one. The soup had predictable effects on Richard’s weak constitution and he filled the tent with his noisy and odorous emissions. What with that, the hammering, shouting and sawing outside, Herbert’s groaning, Nicholas’s feet in my face if I turned one way and Robert’s if I turned the other, I got hardly any sleep. Under such squalid conditions are the great matters of state decided.
When we emerged the following morning the sight that greeted our eyes was wondrous to behold. The engineers had been busy all night and had achieved miracles in such a short space of time. It was a sunny June morning, the tenth of that month I think, and with pendants flying all was colour and spectacle and noise. The king’s party had already arrived and occupied the western end of the meadow while the barons had the east. In between were amassed the opposing garrisons each eyeing the other warily across the few yards that separated them with one large open-sided marquee right in the middle. It was beneath this marquee, I was told, that the signing ceremony was to take place. Hugh rejoined us saying he would be seeing the king again after the main business of the day which was, of course, the king signing the charter.
I say “sign” but in fact John signed nothing. The great seal of state was simply affixed to the bottom of the document to authenticate it, most of the actual details having been agreed days in advance. And thus it was that with a flourish of fanfares and a flurry of flags the great deed was done. Unlike most of his opponents that day John could actually have read and understood the words contained in the charter had he a mind to, although I doubt if he bothered. It was a preposterous document and hardly worth the effort. But he did make a pretty little speech to the effect that he had always held to the principles etcetera set out in the document etcetera and thanked the men who drew them up for reminding him etcetera of his regal obligations etcetera etcetera… Remembering our conversation of six months earlier I was amazed he was able to keep a straight face. Such is the way with politics – a grubby business; I cannot think why my mother is attracted to it. Once the ceremony was out of the way the warring parties withdrew to their own sides of the field to congratulate or commiserate as they saw fit.
And then it was our turn.
We six went with solemn approach into the king’s private tent singing the Te Deum and stood around as Hugh knelt before his monarch. With little ado John placed the mitre on Hugh’s head and the ring on his finger, kissed him fully on the mouth and confirmed him as the next Abbot of Saint Edmundsbury – done in less than two minutes. It was a small moment to savour. At last after nearly two years of mutual recrimination, obfuscation and confusion we had our pastor back. Tears of joy filled Hugh’s eyes as he placed his hands between the king’s in a gesture of fealty and homage. As he did so, I could not but wonder how much John knew of his new abbot’s loyalties over the matter of the charter. I suspect from the twinkle in his eye that he knew only too well. Having kissed the king’s feet, the new Abbot of Saint Edmund’s went off to give thanks and to celebrate mass with the Archbishop singing Psalm 51 as he went: “Have mercy upon me, Oh God, and wipe away my faults”. His business concluded, however, he was in no immediate hurry to start back for Suffolk. As the newly-enthroned Baron of the Liberty of Saint Edmund, Hugh was keen to have his copy of the new charter. Every shire in the country was to be issued with one, apparently, the work for which would keep the royal scribes busy for weeks. So we waited for ours to be drafted so that we could take it with us rather than have the clerks send it out by messenger, and then we left for Bury.
One final ironic twist to this saga needs to be told. Important as the charter was, more important still was the oath to be taken by all free men to the committee of twenty-five barons charged with ensuring the king did not renege on his commitments contained therein. Among these twenty-five “surety barons” as they were to be called was none other than my old enemy, Geoffrey de Saye. I permitted myself a brief snort of contempt when I heard the news for having Geoffrey de Saye police the liberties of England was like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop. But what goes around comes around and within a few short years many of the rebels would be dead including Archbishop Langton and, sadly for me, my mother. Some say this was God’s judgment wrought upon the ungodly. I leave that for others to decide.
*
All of which is a matter of record to be nit-picked and crawled over endlessly by future historians. But now I am going to reveal something that you will not find in any of the history books:
Just after Hugh had been confirmed in his position as abbot and my brother monks were filing out of the royal enclosure, King John indicated that I should remain. The others, Prior Herbert in particular, looked on in annoyance I’m pleased to say, but what could I do but shrug and obey my sovereign’s command? John again dismissed his guard leaving just the two of us alone in his tent. I say “tent” – it was more substantial than many a burgess’s dwelling with rushes on the floor, hanging tapestries and couches to recline upon. He took off his coronet and gloves, laid aside the sword of state and poured himself a goblet of wine.
‘Well Bumble, what did you make of that?’
I eyed the goblet covetously and cleared my parched throat. ‘Sire, I’m sure I speak for all my brother monks when I say I welcome the appointment of our new abbot.’
‘Not that, you fool, I meant the charter. Have you read it?’
I demurred. ‘Some of it.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘The parts your mother had a hand in. Oh don’t look so surprised – you think I don’t know of Lady Isabel’s predilections? Or about the barons’ meeting in the abbey church? I should have surrounded the place and burnt it to the ground and that lot with it. Save me a lot of trouble.’ He waved a dismissive hand towards the barons. ‘But the pope wouldn’t have liked that. He sees your abbey as something of a milch-cow - and who would there be left to collect my taxes if half my barons were slaughtered?’
‘I am much relieved to hear it sire.’
‘Why? Because you were inside too?’ he asked sardonically.
I felt the blood drain from my face. ‘Not on the ground floor, sire.’
‘No, up in the air where you always are, Bumble, up in the air.’ He flopped down on one of the couches. ‘So, what do you think. Should I have signed or not?’
I took a deep breath. ‘No sire. Definitely not. It was so…demeaning. It made you no better than they are.’
He nodded gravely. ‘Nicely said, Bumble. No different from them, certainly. Maybe I should have made you Abbot of Edmundsbury instead of Hugh Northwold. I could do with a few friends around.’ He took a long draught of his wine.
‘Oh sire,’ I simpered, ‘you have many friends.’
He shook his head. ‘Kings don’t have friends, Bumble, they have allies, associates, collaborators.’
‘I like to think I’m your friend, sire.’
He smiled and patted me on the head like a pet dog. ‘Fret not, Bumble. I haven’t lost yet. That thing I signed this morning - anyone can see it will never work. Under its terms they have the right to take up arms against me for any infringement I make however trivial. So I’ll simply commit some minor indiscretion and they’ll mobilize their forces. I’ll back down and they’ll de-mobilize. Then I’ll do something else that upsets them, they’ll mobilize again. I’ll retreat…and so on. They’ll soon get sick of putting on their armour every time one of their fellows decides he’s been badly done by. Sooner or later they’ll get fed up, we’ll have another Runnymede and then i
t’ll be me dictating the terms. You’ll see. I can’t lose - unless of course I die beforehand which isn’t very likely. I’m not yet fifty and strong as an ox. Even my father was fifty-six when he died and my mother was over eighty. I’ve got years ahead of me yet. And in the meantime more of them will come over to me. Then when I’ve got enough I’ll crush them and consign their precious charter to the dunghill of history where it belongs.’ He crushed his fist by way of demonstration.
I could see he was in earnest, the anger simmering barely below the surface. But he seemed to have better control over his temper these days able to bide his time rather than burst into a rage as he once would have done. Still, I did not envy the barons who continued to oppose him - and that included Geoffrey de Saye. Well, they say every cloud has its silver lining.
‘By the way, Bumble,’ he said pouring himself a refill of wine. ‘How did you get on with that murder? Did you find the culprit?’
‘I did, sire - eventually.’
‘All stuff and nonsense, wasn’t it? That boy needn’t have run for France. I knew everything he knew before he did. A total waste of time.’
And thus in a sentence did he dismiss the lives of Effie, Raoul, Hervey and Mother Han, not to mention Eusebius in his bricked-up cell.
‘How…erm…did you know?’
He smiled. ‘Remember those two young men, pilgrims on their way to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham?’ He chuckled. ‘You really shouldn’t take everyone at face value, my overly-trusting friend.’
*
Those were the last words the king ever spoke to me. I did see him one more time - briefly, the following spring as he passed through Bury on his way to lay siege to Earl Bigod’s castle at Framlingham. But he was a soldier then at the head of an army and had little time for monks. The castle surrendered almost immediately but seven months later despite his predictions to the contrary King John was dead – dying, strangely enough, at the time of the next Blood Moon.
Hugh showed me our copy of the charter when we finally got it home. It seems I got my way over the inclusion of forestry law reform. Clause 48 of the charter provided for twelve knights of the shire to investigate the “evil practises and customs” in the old forest laws. Under their auspices all royal woodlands enclosed since the time of John’s father, King Harry, were deforested and all those outlawed for breaches of the forest law were pardoned. Unfortunately for Gil the amnesty did not go so far as to pardon him for the murder of his lord’s son, nor did it restore to Lena her virginity, Will Conyer his family, Fra William his living or Fitchet his nose. What happened to them I never discovered. I can only hope that since I never heard the name Gil of Nayland mentioned again he managed to survive my blundering into his camp and lives still in his comfortable forest hideaway.
Eventually the forestry reforms became so many they were given their own separate Charter of the Forest while everything else was put into the bigger one which became known as the Great Charter - or to give it its Latin name, Magna Carta in order to differentiate between the two. I like to think the name-change was my personal contribution to the business. Not that I ever dreamed it would survive, but survive it has despite civil war, John’s death and the enthronement of his son, Henry - the little boy who I had last seen holding his mother’s hand in the abbot’s palace. At least we have the blessing that he was not called Louis.
And one last word before I lay down my pen. Once back in Bury, Prior Herbert still did not manage to find the courage to have his bad tooth removed. He suffered agonies for most of the time he was away despite my ministrations, I’m happy to say, and in fact his problems in that quarter seemed to be getting worse. A few days after our return I saw him creeping across the cloister garth holding his mouth and looking very sorry for himself. Once I’d managed to persuade him to remove the hand I saw that he had burns all over his chin and lips. When I enquired how he got them he explained that an old medicine woman had told him to hold the naked flame of a candle beneath the painful tooth and a bowl of cold water beneath that. The worms that were gnawing at the tooth would then drop into the cool water to escape the heat and thus the toothache would be cured.
‘Did it work?’ I asked struggling to keep a straight face.
‘Does it look like it?’ he groaned.
Such invention! Such audacity! Such nonsense! It could only be the work of one person. It seems that Mother Han didn’t die at the hand of Eusebius after all and I wondered, as I laughed myself to sleep that night, when or even whether I would be seeing the old miscreant again.
HISTORICAL NOTE
King John has had a bad press. That’s because most of his obituaries have been written by churchmen who didn’t like him very much. But he was probably a better king of England than his brother Richard who had contempt for all things English and didn’t even speak the language. John’s monument is not a bronze statue of a sword-wielding crusader sitting astride his charger outside the Houses of Parliament but a two-foot square piece of parchment written in archaic Medieval Latin.
The name Magna Carta, or Great Charter, has almost magical resonances today but it was only called that in order to differentiate it from the smaller Charter of the Forest which accompanied it. Americans in particular revere the document as a precursor to their own constitution. In fact Magna Carta was little more than a negotiating tool and a thoroughly unworkable one since it institutionalized rebellion and ensured permanent civil war. It was revised many times before it was finalized and the document we have today is not the one John signed at Runnymede in June 1215. Nevertheless that first attempt set out certain principles which have been expanded upon over the eight hundred years since it was drafted and which form the basis of modern western democratic government particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries. John did not sign it willingly. In fact the greatest service he did this country was to die before he had a chance to revoke it leaving a nine-year-old child on the throne and the barons thereby free to enact its principles.
Most of the characters in this novel were real people and many of the events actually happened. Prior Herbert was the prior of Bury during the interregnum between the death of Abbot Samson and the election of Hugh Northwold. Geoffrey de Saye did become a member of the committee of twenty-five “Surety Barons” whose job it was to enforce the terms of the charter. He later went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for a lifetime of sin and died in Poitou in August 1230 aged seventy-five. King John did come to Bury St Edmunds in November 1214 to impose his own candidate for the vacant abbacy only to be sent away by the monks with a flea in his ear. Hugh Northwold was eventually confirmed by John as the eleventh abbot of Saint Edmund’s at Runnymede the day after the signing of Magna Carta. He went on to become Bishop of Ely Cathedral where his tomb can be seen today in the presbytery that he built there. Bishop John de Gray did die in France on his way back from seeing the pope and his bones are buried in Norwich Cathedral. He may well have had a nephew who could have got wind of the barons’ rebellion and tried to get to France to warn his uncle - dressing as a woman was a favourite ruse of fleeing fugitives in those days. There is some question as to whether the barons’ meeting in the abbey church of Bury St Edmunds actually took place, but they must have met somewhere at sometime in the months before Runnymede to agree their strategy, and where better than before the high altar of greatest abbey in England on the feast day of its saint?
SWW July 2011
DEVIL’S ACRE
January 1242. Brother Walter is dying. He is an old man but the prospect of death does not disturb him - indeed, he welcomes it to meet with old friends and see God in the face. But before he finally joins the heavenly host he is determined to solve one last mystery that has been plaguing him for decades.
But there are dark forces afoot that want to frustrate his efforts and are prepared to go to any lengths to keep secret events that even now could disturb the government of England - even murder.
In his mind Walter returns to those far off time
s when Abbot Samson took him on a bizarre journey away from the comforting familiarity of Bury Abbey and into the wilds of barbaric Norfolk where the abbot’s power is limited and be met by a far greater one in the guise of the Warenne family of Castle Acre - or as some still choose to call it, the Devil’s Acre.
UNHOLY INNOCENCE
May 1199. Richard the Lionheart is dead and his brother John has just been crowned King of England.
John travels to St Edmund’s abbey in Suffolk to give thanks for his accession. His visit coincides with the murder of a twelve-year-old boy whose mutilated body bears the marks of ritual sacrifice and martyrdom. This isn’t the first time such a thing has happened. Eighteen years earlier another child was murdered in the town in similar circumstances.
Abbot Samson needs to find out if this is indeed another martyrdom or just an ordinary murder and appoints the abbey’s physician, Master Walter, to investigate. Walter discovers a web of intrigue and corruption involving some of the highest in the land but unbeknown to him his own past holds a secret which will put his life in danger before the final terrible solution is revealed.
“Wheeler engages the reader’s interest from page one and doesn’t let go…A book which will appeal to historical novel fans…”
Eastern Daily Press
THE SILENT AND THE DEAD
Winifred Jonah seemed like an ordinary Norfolk housewife, jolly, plump and harmless. Yet her bland exterior concealed a sinister secret. At fourteen she had already murdered her aunt and uncle and forty years later it was her husband’s turn to die. Even so she might have made it to her own grave without further incident if she hadn’t met Colin Brearney. He thought she was going to be a pushover, but he had no idea who he was taking on. The day Colin knocked at her door was the beginning of a nightmare that could only end in blood, silence and death…
Blood Moon Page 24