Midnight in Westminster Abbey

by Sean Dennis Cashman

  THE DEVIL’S CROWN

  On the left of the door, the smaller figure with exquisitely dressed locks was slightly tubby. His flabby shape suggested a steady diet of comfort food like sweets or candies. Yet this man had a strong build upon his five-foot-six frame and a pleasant face. To the right, the taller one by a good six inches with opulent cascading locks had the arrogant look of one who knows he is superior in height, in physical prowess and in his easy command of everyone.

  Their physiques were so different that you might not immediately think of these figures as father and son except that they both had a singular facial feature: their left eyes drooped. As Ginny stared in wonder at the craftsmanship of the artists who had created these striking figures, these two kings, father Henry III and son Edward I, began to look more natural. They seemed less like effigies and more like humanoid guardians of the threshold. Their splendid sculpted garments became more like real folds of fine cloth than metal mouldings. And Henry III’s cloak was trimmed with opulent black fur. She could not be sure but Ginny thought she saw the handle of a hairbrush poking out of a pocket in King Henry’s robes.

  While Ginny was taking this in, Henry III said gently, “You can come in, you know. Official visiting hours are over so there’s no fee. You don’t have to pay. My great granddaughter-in-law said you would drop by. Where would you like to go first? The mysterious chapel of St Edward? The airy cloisters? Our unpretentious tombs?”

  “My royal father is too modest,” said the lofty son, stretching his shapely legs to show them off. “He would like to show you the chief glory of the great architecture of his reign: our remodelled and expanded Westminster Abbey.”

  To begin with, Ginny was too fascinated by Edward I’s lisp—surprising in one with such an assertive manner—to understand what he meant.

  “It really was my idea,” added the older king timidly. “To resurrect the reputation of my personal saint, Edward the Confessor—the last undisputed Saxon king—after whom I named my beloved eldest son.”

  “You’re from New York, I take it?” asked Edward I.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I should like America,” said Henry III.

  Charlie had already coached Ginny about what she should answer if any Brit said this.

  “I suppose that’s because we have no ruins and no curiosities.”

  “No ruins!” exclaimed Henry III. “You have your presidents.”

  “No curiosities,” continued Edward I. “You have your Oscar ceremonies.”

  Ginny could not help smiling. Then she noticed that the little king was staring at the puce-coloured hearing aid in her ear. So before he could ask her about it, she changed the subject.

  “I know that many—but not all—kings from Henry III to George II are buried here. What about other kings, other royal sons and heirs—presumptive, apparent and the rest?” Ginny asked rolling out the difficult words.

  “Not all the kings and queens by a long chalk,” said Edward I tartly. “Not everyone’s here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Some chose to rest somewhere else. Some had the choice taken away from them.”

  “Why was that?”

  "To rest here, you had to stay in power, have the measure of those who criticised you—even attacked you with words or other weapons—and beat them at their own game: survive at all costs.

  “Some of us were not so fortunate or played their hands of cards badly,” said Henry III. "They had acid reigns and got washed away in the downpour. So they rest somewhere else—heir-brushed out of the charmed circle of tourist favourites.

  “That’s a pun,” King Henry added. As further explanation of posthumous removals, he continued, “Over the centuries, our royal families lived through turbulent times. Not every king survived intact. My own father, King John, died unexpectedly when he was facing a French invasion and unrest at home. He’s buried in Worcester Cathedral. I was an innocent child, only nine years old—like your younger brother, Georgie.”

  Ginny could not help herself interrupting, “Georgie, Georgie—you know where my brother is? Is he safe? Can I get back to him?”

  “That’s not your concern,” Edward I answered firmly, knowing that his harsh tone would make Ginny worry even more.

  “And my father? Where is he?”

  “Where you left him of course,” said Henry III simply: “You left him sleeping. He’s there still.”

  “Or until we wake him,” added Edward ominously.

  Ginny understood that, for the moment, she would have to be content with this terse reply.

  Meanwhile, Edward trod the higher ground of artistic appreciation.

  “The renovated and expanded abbey was to become the coronation site of kings. My father really did rebuild the paltry abbey in Anglo-French Gothic style as a shrine to venerate King Edward the Confessor and as a suitably regal setting for his own tomb.”

  “It’s the highest Gothic nave in England. Just look above you,” added King Henry.

  As they looked up at the ceiling of the nave, Edward admitted that his father and he were not the be-all and end-all of the rebuilding: "The work continued until 1517 but it was largely finished by the stonemason architect Henry Yevele in the reign of Richard II.

  “You chose to enter our world,” Edward said sternly changing the subject. “It’s just the same when you travel to a foreign country in your own time. They have their customs, their rules, and they expect foreigners to follow them. They also have border controls with immigration questions. It’s just the same with us—our world, our questions, our Passport Control. You want to see our coronation ceremony, don’t you?”

  Ginny nodded.

  “Well, to get there you have to take the scenic route. To appreciate any precious stones, you must understand the historical setting.”

  Henry III added, “When you go through the next entrance in our world, you will meet my great-grandson and his grandson. They will give you a few history tutorials. Then they will ask you two questions to see if you’re ready for what lies ahead. Nothing difficult. What you learn will give you the information you need to answer the questions. Try and remember to keep to two subjects—the weather and everyone’s health.”

  “Your romantic idea of pastel coloured courts in the Middle Ages is charming and picturesque—valiant knights in shining armour competing for fair ladies in Disney ball gowns,” said Edward I. “Get real. My grandson and great-grandson will show you the calamitous fourteenth century as real and cruel as it was. Have you got what it takes to survive? Let’s see, shall we?”

  And with that, the kings disappeared. Ginny heard a whoosh, like the sound of a stage curtain in a theatre going up before a play.

  THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR

  Ginny now found herself in front of a large ornamental gate with a sentry box at either side. Again, there was a muddy greenish glow to everything. This time, she could smell juniper, so much more pungent in this world than her own that she wanted to find a juniper bush and squeeze its buds. Ginny was not surprised to see Edward III (Edward I’s grandson) in the sentry box on the left. She recognised him from photos of the effigy on his tomb. The family resemblance among these Plantagenet kings was remarkable, she thought. Nor was she surprised by the ominous sign above the ornamental gate:

  THE HOLLOW CROWN

  What did surprise Ginny was the nature of the figure in the sentry box on the right. This portal was a weird shape. It had a cross beam that suggested the elongated shoulders of a strange cape. Its sides were like the stretched sleeves of an enveloping cloak ending in two spindly gloved hands. Above the shoulders there seemed to be a head in the triangular recess at the top. But it was hidden by a dark cowl.

  Where Edward III’s cloak had an elaborately embroidered ‘EIII’ in red and gold below his shoulder, the dark stranger’s cloak was embroidered with a dusky blue ‘GP’. Ginny could not work out what it meant. She knew that in England people called local doctors GPs (meaning general prac
titioners) but she did not think these letters GP stood for that.

  Nor did Ginny forget that she was in some parallel world. She understood that she was there for some reason not yet clear.

  The two kings she was looking at were like doormen—bouncers—at bars, night clubs and discos anywhere in the western world. In England, they dignified such people with the term ‘door supervisors’.

  As she appraised Edward III, he looked her up and down in return—and with undisguised disdain. Ginny sensed he was telling her, ‘We’re guardians of this threshold. We’re here to give you a much-needed history tutorial and to tell you who are the good guys and who are the bad. You don’t need us to tell you who are the ugly ones. Those you can see for yourself’.

  Ginny felt both confined and liberated by this environment. She felt confined because she could not move freely—only within this peculiarly restricted space that looked like Westminster Abbey but different. She felt free because she was in a new world of illusions, of mysterious shadows emerging from unknown recesses who then came to life as vivid personalities with pronounced opinions—notably their delusion that they were even more special in death than they had been in life.

  In her early teens, she had devoured the Harry Potter books and had also fallen under the spell of the Dark Materials trilogy. She felt she understood something of the burning imagination of British writers who created parallel worlds. The new world she was in seemed to be cut from the same cloth as JK Rowling and Philip Pullman had cut and styled.

  Ginny saw three outsize leather-bound books on the ground just inside the ornamental gates. Their covers were decorated with semi-precious stones. As she stared at them, the books seemed to get bigger.

  “How mysterious,” she thought.

  “You’re wondering what’s inside those books, aren’t you?” asked Edward III. “They retell the stories of my famous victories.”

  So saying, he stroked his luxurious beard. Then taking Ginny’s hand gently, he led her through the gates as they swung open.

  “They’re presented in a particular style—like books of hours.”

  Without waiting for Ginny to ask what books of hours were—perhaps ways of telling time—he continued.

  “I don’t suppose you have much use for a book of hours in your day. But in our time, they were popular among people who could afford them. The Book of Hours was a Christian devotional book with psalms and prayers. The illustrations you will move through tonight are inspired by elaborate pictures from these books.”

  The first large book lay open vertically. At a cue from the king, it fell gracefully backwards and its illustration popped upwards. Ginny found herself alongside the king on this book that had somehow become a rough raft at the edge of a naval battle.

  “In this pop-up picture, we’ve become characters in my version of the 1340 battle of Sluys in the English Channel.”

  He pronounced Sluys with a Dutch accent that made the name sound like ‘Sloeys’.

  “I had just declared myself king of France in the right of my mother, Isabella. She was sister of three French kings who had all died without sons to succeed them. I paid no heed to the discredited French custom whereby no woman or her sons could succeed to the French throne. Besides, in a fit of pique, Philippe, the pretender whom the French chose as king, had just seized our family lands in Aquitaine. And whoever was the nominal current ruler there, Normandy was our homeland.”

  Just then, the book-raft was thrashed with a squally wave that threatened to capsize it. Ginny shuddered. Without thinking, Edward bent down and raised her, hardly showing any physical effort. This made Ginny see him differently—as a perfect medieval knight: upright and brave. His disdain had evaporated with the salt spray. This was a man who could win over any lady. Nor was Ginny surprised that Edward ignored the possible mishap of being capsized. He was certainly not going to let a mere wave interrupt him.

  The sound and smell of the sea were overwhelming as was the spray. It brought back to Ginny a cherished memory of a vacation with her dad and grandparents on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, after her mother had died: azure sea so beautiful that it seemed like swelling crystal under a most lovely blue sky and radiant sun. The sweet memory mixed with the bobbing scene she was now part of won her over to the prospect and perils of this shimmering Plantagenet world before her.

  Ginny was fascinated by the array of rings on Edward’s hands, the gaudy jewels of red and green that both complimented his knobbly knuckles and also made his warrior’s hands, already toughened by swordplay, look more brutish.

  Edward III did not notice her focussed gaze. He continued.

  “I had learned to play politics. I exploited the need of people in the Netherlands for English wool that they wanted for weaving cloth. This was something at which they excelled. Trade continues by equilibrium of interests. So, the Flemings identified with us, the English, whereas their nobles—the ruling class—identified with France. So the Flemings—the people of the Netherlands—were on our side.”

  Ginny remembered her dad telling her that English wool merchants thought they would profit from war since the campaigns kept the wool trade free from French interference. She wondered if her father’s work—commodities trading—would surface in the king’s history tutorial.

  “Trade means more than goods,” added King Edward as if reading her thought. “It means communication. Humans are fundamentally acquisitive. This means ideas move as well as goods.”

  “So this was how the Hundred Years War between England and France began?” Ginny asked, holding onto the king’s robe as another wave splashed her, stinging her eyes with salt foam.

  “Exactly. Don’t be scared. We’re in an illustration. Waves cut from paper can’t hurt you. Nor can they change the course of history. As I was saying, to win the French crown, I first had to get my expeditionary army to France. And to get there, we had to beat the French fleet that blocked the English Channel off the French coast.”

  From the rough-hewn raft, Ginny saw various galleon-type ships confronting one another. The picture became a moving mass of hurtling dark orangey ships and a blare of noisy commands and counter orders to bustling sailors amid a rumbling, tumbling turquoise sea.

  Ginny had no idea what happened in a naval battle. Her only and not comparable experience was of bathing her brother, Georgie, when he was much younger and playing with toy boats in the water before bedtime. Immediately, Ginny cut off that memory because the bathing had ended abruptly when her stepmother boxed her ears.

  Forcing herself to concentrate on this medieval past, Ginny did not know then that naval battles in the fourteenth century were essentially like land battles fought on ships yoked together. Two opposing ships would be lashed together. Then the men-at-arms would engage in hand-to-hand fighting.

  Edward III said, “What I wanted to do in our campaign was to sail through the Zwin estuary up to Bruges to meet up with our allies, the Flemings. Once there, we would land our army to begin the invasion of France. Of course, the French were determined to stop us. They took the usual tactics of a fleet fighting on the defensive—in this case with three or four lines of ships chained together.”

  Edward continued, "The French had a fleet of 200 ships while, if I’m frank and honest, our English so-called fleet was really nothing more than a group of merchant ships.

  “I sent my ships against the French fleet in units of three—two ships crammed with archers and one full of men-at-arms. Look. See. The English ships with the archers will come alongside a French ship and rain arrows down on its decks. The men-at-arms are going to board and take the French vessel. Our English archers can shoot twenty arrows per minute at a range of up to 300 yards, whereas the Genoese mercenary crossbowmen (whom the French employ) can only manage two arrows per minute.”

  During the fighting amid the men’s heads and shoulders bobbing about, Ginny thought she saw one particular head—or rather the back of the head—of the orderly, the young man with the courteous manner
and dazzling smile from earlier that day: “Can it be? It must be him,” she said over and over again every time her supposed Walter’s handsome head came into view.

  After fierce fighting, the English boarded and captured many French ships. But, despite all the clatter, this naval battle of Sluys was so sluggish that Ginny did not know who had won even when the thunderous noise started to die down and the battered French fleet withdrew.

  When King Edward staggered back to her, Ginny noticed he had a broken arrow sticking out of his side. Before she could register shock, Edward barked at her, “I’ll stand still, holding onto the side. Pull the arrow out with all your might and main.”

  There was no time for Ginny to say she did not have the skill, or that the king needed urgent medical help or that a rough wrench might make the wound worse. Edward looked at her like thunder. There was nothing for her to do but to pull as hard as she could. The king braced himself, saying impatiently, “It’s only paper. We’re in a picture book. But the wound gives me greater credibility.”

  As she got ready for a second tug, Ginny asked, “What happened in the battle? Who won?”

  “Couldn’t you tell?” Edward asked with disbelief. “I just told you. That was the famous battle of Sluys. It lasted nine hours. We destroyed the French fleet with the loss of only two English ships.”

  Ginny concentrated and tugged again at the arrow.

  “It’s come clean out,” Ginny said, astonished that the arrow was out in one piece.