Midnight in Westminster Abbey

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Midnight in Westminster Abbey Page 9

by Sean Dennis Cashman


  “What happened then?” Ginny asked, perplexed by the dawning suspicion that this unfathomable dark figure that she had previously identified as King Death might, instead, be the spirit of that discarded monarch, Richard II.

  “The provocative episode ended with rebel leader Wat Tyler being stabbed to death by the mayor of London, a fishmonger named William Walworth.”

  “My dad told me about Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt,” said Ginny. “In the short run, the rebels lost. I know that. But my dad said that, in the long term, the people gained ground and all by a series of small victories made possible by harsh economic reality. After the Black Death, labour was more valuable. The workers themselves knew it and so did the bosses. Peasants gained greater rights under Common Law and, little by little, serfdom dissolved.”

  “Yes, that’s so.”

  Ginny also knew what her dad had told her about this audacious king. Richard II was supposedly a useless king who had rejoiced in his life as absolute sovereign and assumed he had a divine right to rule capriciously as if rights implied by Magna Carta had never existed. He had made enemies right, left and centre and had no strong allies to save him when he was overthrown by his own cousin, Henry Bolingbroke. So the smell of decay at Mile End was apt.

  Ginny still had this burning question she did not dare ask—yet. How could King Death also be King Richard II? She thought she had better wait for an explanation to emerge naturally, as surely it must. Ginny thought it would be tactless to remind her mysterious guide of his fall. Before she could press him, the dark figure abruptly answered her unasked question by asking it himself.

  "How did I come to be Death? The gossip about me while I was still alive was that I lived in a bubble court that encouraged bubble reputations, that I exercised power badly, frivolously and sometimes for petty ends. But that’s not half the story.

  “I wanted to end the horrible sporadic war with France. I wanted peace between England and France. My second marriage to a French princess-pawn was part of my diplomatic effort. If I do say so myself, I was a magnificent patron of art and architecture. Just take a good look at Westminster Hall next time you’re there. I transformed it with a new hammer-beam roof.”

  “Turning it into a unique throne room of a great church?”

  “You said it.”

  “And the scene of his humiliating abdication,” Ginny thought.

  "I seized the lands of the duchy of Lancaster after Henry Bolingbroke’s father, John of Gaunt, my uncle, died and Henry himself was in exile. This provoked him and he rebelled against me.

  “I thought my friends began with God and worked downwards. But I was wrong. Worse, no one around me would speak Truth to Power. I should have followed your modern advice.”

  “Like, ‘Keep your friends close but your enemies even closer’?”

  "Exactly so. When I faced ruin—stared it in the face—so the legend goes—I sat on the ground and lamented the fickleness of the court and the faithlessness of my subjects. Then, so the tale goes, I came to a blinding realisation: ‘Within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps Death his court’, mocking him and grinning at his downfall.

  “When Henry Bolingbroke got the backing of the thuggish nobles and forced me to abdicate, he became King Henry IV. But although he could keep me locked away in prison, he did not feel safe.”

  “The elephant in the room,” Ginny said.

  “What does that mean?” asked Richard II as he scratched his gingery blonde locks.

  “The elephant in the room? It means an outsize problem that everyone knows but nobody wants to talk about. In this case, you, the rightful king who were still alive. Your quarrel with the Lancastrians represented a bigger issue.”

  “How so?”

  “The lasting legacy of Magna Carta signed by King John in 1215 is that there is the law and no one is above the law—not the barons, not the church, not even the king. Henry Bolingbroke got wide support for seizing your crown because when you disinherited him it was in effect an attack on this key principle of Magna Carta. The king is not above the law. And what you had done against Henry Bolingbroke, you might do against everyone else. Increasingly powerful nobles were not going to be undermined by an unpredictable king.”

  Ginny was astonished she had said all this and been so articulate. The usually voluble Richard II simply stared at her. Did he not understand her? Instead of putting her down, Richard II asked, “What do you want to be when—?” He stopped himself from finishing the question.

  “You mean ‘What do I want to do when I grow up’?” replied Ginny, daring him. She said straightforwardly, “I want to be the first woman president of the United States.”

  Richard II let out a soft low whistle. He had not underestimated her. But he sensed that as a history tutor, he was being taught by this star pupil. What a cliché. The two of them smiled at one another. It was a simple expression of mutual respect. Yet not of trust. They lived in different times, separate universes. Ginny sensed and hoped that, though nothing would be said, this mysterious Richard II might become an ally if she wanted to escape from this strange night-time world. She still wanted to find Georgie and get out.

  But Richard II was locked in the medieval world of his fall. However, he said as if he were reading Ginny’s mind, "Get out, you say: metamorphosis, that’s it. I know all about that. In popular imagination, my fall turned me into a different character—no longer the useless king, the skipping king whose acid reign had overturned the supposed balance of the state—all mouth and no trousers. No, far from it. I became a Christ-like figure, the suffering servant, the sort of sacrificial lamb that organised religion finds most useful and holds most dear.

  "While I still lived, I was a threat to the usurpation of Henry Bolingbroke. Whatever he said, my oh-so convenient murder was his most ardent, if secret, desire. But then, when I was killed in prison by his supporters, far from easing Henry’s path, it made his inner turmoil worse—the fears and guilt that ate him away like grubs nibbling away at his innards.

  "I wasn’t the Black Death. I was the Living Dead. My Christ-like status didn’t die with me. It was enhanced. Even the movers and shakers behind that cloudy institution that is the English Crown came around to that point of view.

  "So my fall, my death, my end, turned me into Death keeping his court in the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of all kings who followed me. My story was a constant warning of the perils of power. My legend turned me into a leering Death. As you know from your histories—authorised, revisionist and children’s—kings and queens don’t just have to watch their backs but also their heads. The pressure must be enormous. You have to feel for them. Or do you? They bring it on themselves.

  “In the fourteen years right up to the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 when the Tudor dynasty seized power, three more kings of England were killed unlawfully—in plain English that’s murdered. And one of them was an innocent child. Since they had already killed me off two generations earlier, I became their forerunner, the iconic martyr representing these later royal victims.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me a question?” enquired Ginny.

  “Oh yes, indeedy. Already tonight, you’ve provoked my esteemed relatives, my royal cousins, into making smart-aleck remarks about your dear United States. And you’ve played upon their supposed dislike of America. Am I right?”

  Ginny nodded.

  “Well, I’m not going to say I dislike America—far from it. Why, do you suppose I would say that? I glory in it. Why?”

  Ginny thought hard but did not like her own conclusion. Richard II smiled and spoke out loud what she was thinking: “When you play Death, ruins and curiosities are right up your alley. Ruins bring you more victims, especially in the ruins of your many wars.”

  Ginny continued Richard’s supposed argument:

  “And you like our curiosities. The American way of death has become a curiosity to the rest of the world. Our memorials, our complex emba
lming processes and our commemorations have become so commercial. Our Memorial Day on the last Monday of May to honour the dead of the American Civil War itself has become a big day for shopping and sales.”

  Richard II did not have to tell Ginny she was right. Ginny smiled inwardly at her little triumph, outguessing the English king.

  Richard was still the self-absorbed narcissist. He said, “As to the next questions, let’s see. Am I like the chorus in an Elizabethan chronicle play—the man to lead you through history by banging the drum of royal propaganda? Or am I an ironic commentator? Or am I that invented concept of modern drama, the unreliable narrator? Does Iago tell the truth to the audience whom he draws into his confidence any more than he does to Othello whom he betrays? Does the silky serpent in Genesis tell the whole truth to Eve whom he beguiles?”

  Ginny knew Richard II did not expect a reply.

  “Here’s another question. If you answer, you go forward. This time, the answer is a matter of opinion. What was my worst political mistake? Did I not understand my own power?”

  Ginny braced herself. But she realised such a king as Richard II did not want to be fobbed off with an insincere pleasantry. It was something one of her teachers in high school had told her that gave her an answer: “Power isn’t something fixed, set in stone, or indestructible like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Grand Canyon in Arizona. And it is far from absolute when it is simply based on title or position that does not command respect.”

  “Right again. Nothing is easier than to waste and lose influence by using it for trivial or private ends,” said Richard II ruefully. “That was my worst mistake. Only after I died did I realise that power has to be supported—replenished and bulwarked—continuously.”

  Richard II paused momentarily. Then he asked Ginny, “Well? How did my successors do? Are you ready for your next interviewer to find out?”

  KNIGHT SOIL

  “He’s waiting for you upstairs in his private chapel,” Richard II explained.

  “A private chapel—upstairs in the abbey?” Ginny asked.

  “Sure. When Henry IV’s eldest son and successor, Henry V, planned his own funeral, he wanted us to pray for him there forever. But his body is buried here just below the chapel—anyway, most of it.”

  The strange figure pointed out an elaborate tomb.

  “Yes, that’s him. Both in his own time and ever since, Henry V has always been regarded as everything a king should be. See the inscription: ‘Henry V, hammer of the Gauls, lies here’.”

  Ginny heard a new sound. Unseen choirs sounded chants offstage that were easy on the ear. They seemed to fall from on high like musical manna from heaven. As the lovely sound drizzled to earth, it spread sideways, enveloping not only the physical space around Ginny and her royal companion but also invading their bodies and minds.

  The mysterious Richard indicated to Ginny that she should not simply look over the tomb of Henry V but also run her hands over the carved effigy. As she did so, he told her what was there, what was no longer there, and what had happened to the missing artefacts.

  “Originally, the head of Henry V’s effigy and the sceptre and other regalia were silver. There were also silver-gilt plates covering his figure. But all the silver was stolen in the Tudor period. For centuries, the effigy was just a plain block of oak.”

  Ginny ran her right hand over Henry V’s noble face and crafted armour. Sensing her next question, the stranger continued.

  "Yes, he’s back now. In 1971, an artist named Louisa Bolt modelled a new head, hands and a crown in polyester resin. That’s what you’re feeling. To get his features right, she went back to the earliest portrait they have of Henry V. She also looked up contemporary descriptions.

  “Look, see. The bridges supporting the chapel are decorated with sculptures of Henry V at his coronation and riding into battle. It’s quite a privilege to be allowed inside his chapel. Most people don’t get in because physical access is so problematic. And, as you’ll see, the chapel is diminutive.”

  Her dark guide led Ginny between a pair of stone turrets flanking the tomb that partly hid the entrance to the chapel and then up a narrow spiral staircase with steps so worn they had been almost hollowed out by the tread of countless pilgrims past. The tiny chantry chapel at the top allowed a glimpse of the abbey from its modest height. Its cream-coloured ledges and its altar of the annunciation were surprisingly simple. Ginny’s guide pointed upwards. “If you look above, you can see figures of saints and kings carved into the chapel.”

  A young man was kneeling in silent prayer at the plain altar. He was in a modern soldier’s khaki army uniform but Ginny did not know the UK styles or ranks. When he rose, she recognised him from a reproduction poster of his portrait in her dad’s study. He looked just like it.

  Henry V was very tall—her dad had said about 6 feet, 3 inches—and slim. His dark hair was cropped in a ring above the ears—a pudding-basin cut she had heard dad say. Unlike the other kings she had met that night, he was clean-shaven. His complexion was ruddy from many days outdoors in camp and on the chase. His lean face had a long pointed nose—one of the facial characteristics of Plantagenet men.

  It dawned on Ginny that whoever were the unseen fates that ran Westminster Abbey after hours, they wanted her to experience the social and family stories of the kings and queens of England through freeze-frame snapshots and sound bites. That must be why her path through the Angevin-Plantagenet dynasty was like a leisurely cantor on horseback with various staging posts, some characterised by a particular sense: sight for Edward III, smell for Richard II. Perhaps taste would come with the banquet after the kings’ secret ceremony—if she ever got there.

  Through all these sensory experiences ran a new and sharp sixth sense—seeing dead people who would not accept that they were dead. Ginny recalled a famous cult movie in which dead folk who reach out to a frightened little boy (who is one of its two heroes) were eerie, troubled souls who bore the marks of the macabre ways in which they had died. Well, buried or not, these kings in Westminster Abbey refused to lie down.

  What about a regular sense—touch for Henry V?

  Just as Ginny was thinking this, it started snowing—inside the chapel. She could not believe it. At first, Ginny simply brushed aside the wet splashes on her cheeks, thinking she must have been crying a little at tales of grief and woe in the battles she had learned about. But, as the snowfall got heavier, she knew it really must be snow with such great white globs and dollops. Yet no matter how heavy the snow, she never got really damp and cold.

  The spirit of Richard II was beside her with another tart explanation.

  “When Henry V was crowned king here, it was early April but there was a late snowstorm—and it was heavy—like this. The common people couldn’t decide what it signified. Was it a good or a bad omen?”

  He continued his vein of gentle sarcasm.

  "Our precious Henry was twenty-six when he became king. He felt (as his father Henry IV had never done), sure of his title—which they had stolen from me. And Henry V, the new king, was eager for grandeur—not only on the throne of England but also as the preeminent king of Western Christendom.

  “Henry V had been trained for power from early on. He had spent his youth in camp and council. I kept him beside me in my Irish campaigns—a subtle form of hostage as surety for good behaviour by his dastardly father whom I had sent into exile. When his father was king, for five or six years young Henry had sometimes run the government during his father’s premature (and much-deserved) decline. All those romantic stories of young Henry’s riotous youth in the fleshpots of London and his sudden conversion to virtue when he became king are—like his later achievements—greatly exaggerated.”

  While Henry V himself was still intent on his private thoughts in the chapel, Richard II decided to bend young Ginny to his point of view about Henry’s politics.

  “When Henry became king, England was weary of feuds and wanted unity and fame. So we’re told. Henry V h
ad the dream of uniting Western Europe—that’s according to his admirers. Just as his great grandfather, Edward III, had done, Henry V laid claim to the French throne on the grounds of his descent from Isabella of Valois, the French she-wolf mother of Edward III.”

  The snow continued to fall. Ginny wondered if they would get caught in a mysterious indoor drift. This made it difficult to concentrate on Richard II’s little history tutorial.

  “The English like to think that Henry V wanted to unite England and France in peace through a common kingship while the two countries would keep their separate institutions and laws. This vision was not unusual. Centuries later, your great World War II leader Winston Churchill once proposed such a union.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Ginny.

  Just then Henry V, kneeling in front of them in the chapel, set his plain prayer book on a ledge. Richard II picked it up. He removed a spare sheet of paper casually inserted into it as a page marker and pointed out a scrawled sentence: “My nobles say, ‘The king will attempt nothing that is not to the glory of God, and will eschew the shedding of Christian blood; if he goes to war, the cause will be the renewal of his rights, not his own wilfulness’.”

  “They’re so pretentious,” sneered Richard II. “Any old platitude will do.”

  Henry rose. He turned towards Ginny but looked straight through her. Speaking aloud to reassure himself, he said as if talking to camera, "In the projected invasion of France, I had some political advantages. The atmosphere was poisonous in France under King Charles VI. He was unstable. In my day, we called it mad. Damn right. Sometimes he thought he was made of glass. He was an embarrassment. His nobles might have removed him but his eldest son and heir, the dauphin aka the dolphin, was capricious—also unpromising material for a king. That wasn’t surprising. Charles’s wife—another naughty Isabelle—had a reputation for playing away.

 

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