Midnight in Westminster Abbey

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Midnight in Westminster Abbey Page 10

by Sean Dennis Cashman


  “And France itself was divided into two factions, the Orleanists and the Burgundians. It was unsettling. Damn right.”

  Richard II said quietly to Ginny, “A kingdom divided by quarrels is an easier prey to an invading army.”

  Henry V turned to Ginny to acknowledge her.

  “In France, I chose to take sides with the weaker Burgundian faction. In return, they were ready to acknowledge me as king of France—and that was before we had shot a single bolt. So I could count upon the support of a great part of the French people. Damn right.”

  Ginny hardly heard the king’s words. She stood entranced. She thought she had never seen such a charismatic face as that of Henry V. This was no schoolboy hero. His face was like the most romantically beautiful, most physically attractive Hollywood A-list star ready for his close-up in an action movie.

  “Well,” she thought, “his famous portrait doesn’t do him justice. Perhaps they didn’t paint people well in his day.”

  With Henry’s one glance at Ginny, any idea she had about the gorgeous Walter and her teenage crush evaporated. Ginny remembered her dad telling her how film stars who had flesh impact—those who onscreen had a skin that positively glistened—were an immortal cut above other stars. Well, flesh impact Henry V certainly had. Then she noticed something else: a bad scar on his right cheek. Richard II, as usual, knew what she was thinking. Again like the irritating gnat in her hearing aid, he explained it.

  “Henry has battle scars. Yes, they’re quite prominent. As a youngster—when you moderns called him Prince Hal—he led part of his father’s forces into Wales against Owain Glyndŵr. He also joined forces with his father to fight Henry Hotspur and other rebels at the Battle of Shrewsbury. He was only sixteen. Hotspur was killed and Prince Hal himself was almost killed by an arrow that got stuck in his face. Any pleb or peasant would have died.”

  As the unreliable narrator that was Richard II told his story, Ginny inspected Henry V’s golden, battle-ravaged face as lovingly as if she were a movie camera adoring its own selected close-up.

  “But young Prince Hal had the advantage of the best possible medical treatment,” continued Richard II. "For several days, John Bradmore, the king’s doctor, treated young Henry’s facial wound using honey as an antiseptic. Then he screwed a slender homemade tool like a cylinder into the broken arrow shaft. Using a thread and tugging it very slightly this way and that, he drew out the broken arrow parts from young Henry’s face without causing much more damage. Once the arrow head was out, the doctor flushed the wound with alcohol. The operation was a success.

  “But the wound and the remedy left Henry with a permanent scar. Of course, such scars stood as physical proof of his experience in battle-distinguishing marks better than any words when he was getting people to fight for him.”

  Ginny thought Richard was unkind. But she had to admit that his comment about Henry V’s adroit self-publicity made sense.

  Just then, Henry V stooped down to pick something up from the floor of the chapel. Ginny thought he must be scooping snow from the stones to make a snowball. He held the white mass up with a generous smile on his flushed face. He looked around enquiringly. This ball was not made of snow.

  “Tennis balls, my liege,” answered Richard, crouching on the ground but not looking up. It was as if he was acting the part of some unidentified courtier replying to Henry V’s unasked question. Ginny saw that the snow at her feet had, indeed, turned into a rolling carpet of hard tennis balls.

  Richard II explained the sour joke.

  “Ever the conniving politician, Henry waived his alleged right to the French throne but claimed the former French possessions of our ancestors—Normandy, Anjou and so on. Even in a country in chaos with a mentally ill king, this was unacceptable. So, when the French repudiated Henry’s claim, the dolphin added a personal insult by sending a mocking gift of tennis balls as if Henry were an upstart boy playing school sports.”

  “So,” thought Ginny, “the snow on Henry V’s coronation day has turned into the dauphin’s bitter mock with tennis balls to underline his jibe that the kingdom of England had been turned over to a schoolboy’s care.”

  Henry V read her mind and said, “History and other fictions said I wasn’t good enough.”

  “But you proved them wrong,” said Richard II without any audible trace of irony.

  “Damn right. You bet your sweet ass. I’m allowed modern military language. I’m a soldier—and a damn good one.”

  From the side, Richard continued his wry commentary.

  “I don’t like to admit it but Henry did avoid my mistakes, my errors of judgment and petty revenges. From the first, he made it clear that he would rule England as the head of a united nation. He let many past differences be forgotten. Of course, he hoped to buy forgiveness for the Lancastrians’ theft of the crown from me, the legitimate king.”

  Henry continued his vein of self-righteous justification.

  “I had the body of Richard II brought from Kings Langley in Hertfordshire to London and reinterred here in Westminster Abbey beside his adored first wife, Anne of Bohemia. I had it done with solemn ceremony and pageant. Damn right.”

  “The second burial wasn’t the end of the commemoration,” said Richard II. “Henry ordered large tapers—they were to burn continually for me here in Westminster Abbey. Every week there was to be a requiem in my honour.”

  The spirit of Richard now decided to take centre stage. He rose from the floor where he had been crouching unnoticed by Henry. With an elegant flick, he cast off his sombre priest’s garb. It fell noiselessly to the floor to reveal all the royal perfection of Richard II in splendid robes as in the famous glowing Wilton double portrait (or diptych) with himself in full medieval majesty of blue and gold.

  Henry was startled but tried to cover his surprise.

  Richard then said, "Who knows whose body it was you brought back or who I really had been in life? I was your symbol of making peace with the past, your icon of a martyred king. But if I was your tool when you buried me a second time, you certainly became mine.

  “As a spirit, I survive everything and I remain the spectre hovering in the crown of all English kings. As I’ve told this charming young lady, I remind them—like successful generals used to be reminded in Imperial Rome—that they are mere mortals, that Death awaits them.”

  He looked at Ginny wryly. She took a chance with her next remark.

  “My dad says you can escape everything but death and taxes.”

  “That’s true—especially the bit about taxes for English kings—damn true,” said Henry V, determined to retake the initiative and relive his war.

  “So you and your army set sail for France?” Ginny asked, not wanting Henry to get distracted by Richard II.

  “Yes. Damn right we did. First, we captured the important fortress of Harfleur. Then I decided to march with our army across the French countryside towards Calais—despite warnings of doom and gloom among our council. Then came our greatest challenge. On 25 October 1415, on the plains near a village named Agincourt, a French army intercepted us. Damn nerve.”

  Ginny pondered how, if William Shakespeare in his play Henry V had used an unnamed Chorus to stimulate his audience to imagine ‘the vasty fields of France’ within the Wooden O of an Elizabethan theatre, what would these lively royal spirits do on this All Souls’ Eve to transform Westminster Abbey into the blood-soaked fields of a legendary military campaign? Turning around, she got her answer.

  Henry pointed to the nave of Westminster Abbey. From the raised chantry chapel, Ginny peered down the dark body of the abbey. It now looked like a rumpled carpet of cloth and canvas punctuated by flags and banners and some turrets among the tents. Leaning over, she could touch the rough fabric of highflying pennants nearby.

  “As camp as a row of tents?” asked Richard II.

  Henry was not deterred.

  “Overnight the French nobles, confident of easy victory, played dice to decide how they would
apportion spoils from our English bodies and what ransoms they would claim from the families of the English prisoners they expected to capture. Their confidence seemed justified. Damn right. The French numbered twenty thousand, drawn up in three lines of battle with many mounted men. We English only had a third as many soldiers and we were a long way from the sea and escape.”

  Downstairs from the upper chapel, Ginny found herself walking with the two kings between rows of tents. She felt the wet earth beneath her feet, the chill of the night breeze and the fleeting warmth of a few scant fires. From the flickering light of Henry’s heraldic fire beacon (which Richard told her was called a cresset), Ginny saw men sleeping fitfully and uneasily. She sensed the palpable fear of the English forces. It was as if they wanted her to share their anxiety. Then a heavy rainstorm burst upon them. It dampened everyone’s spirits even more. She felt it as heavy and stormy as any heavy shower in a New England fall. This time she was cold and wet and trembling.

  When the sky cleared and glimmers of light brought dawn through the clouds, she watched Henry V dress and arm himself. His fixed gaze never faltered. He now had an elaborate medieval cloak with beautiful designs to the left and right where it fastened. There was a striking emblem on the back. While he adjusted his armour, he laid the cloak on the ground for a moment. Then the complex design on the back of his cloak clambered upright and became alive—no longer ornate embroidery but three fully formed beings. In a modern night full of medieval surprises, Ginny was not taken aback by heraldic designs that lived and breathed.

  Facing Ginny and chained to the beacon that Henry had also planted on the ground were an elegant swan and a lovely antelope. The swan was silver white with a red beak and red feet. A gold chain wrapped itself around a decorative mini gold crown on the swan’s stylish neck and over its beefy body below one raised and threatening wing. By its side, the shapely antelope at first looked a drab brown. But when Ginny inspected it more closely, she could tell it was really a duller silver white than the swan. Its perky mane was coiffed like a teenage boy’s quiff in the 1950s. The humble antelope seemed uncomfortable having to give precedence to an arrogant bird even though it had as compensation four decorative red roses to smell at its feet.

  At first, Ginny did not notice the third heraldic device low on the ground. It looked like another piece of the sparse chapel furniture. But it was the stump of a tree. As soon as she did notice it, it seemed to glow with the persistence of a dull gold.

  Having looked her up and down critically, the swan indicated the stump and said in a fluting treble, “It’s called a stock eradiated. It represents the dukedom of Hereford that Henry V inherited from his father. Tut, tut.”

  Ginny could not place the swan’s accent but it sounded faintly Chinese. She dismissed this as implausible.

  The antelope had also guessed why Ginny was startled. More conciliatory than the proud swan, it said in a plumy mezzo soprano, “That’s enough. This charming young lady has come to observe the battle. Here’s the crux of the matter. While his soldiers prepare to attack, our master, dear King Henry, needs silence in order to think clearly. He’s consumed with doubts—wouldn’t you be? He’s just tried to avoid what’s going to be a desperate battle. He’s offered to give up the city of Harfleur and all his prisoners to the French in exchange for an open road to Calais. But the dolphin wants more. He says Henry must give up his claim to the French crown.”

  The snooty swan said nothing but shook its head and added, “Tut, tut,” under its breath.

  “Of course,” continued the antelope, not wanting to appear disloyal, “this is something King Henry will not do. He is going to dare everything.”

  The swan nodded.

  The spirit of Richard II, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, said, “You remember, our national playwright and poet—the one who thinks he sees into everyone’s souls—gives the new king this to say in his tub-thumping play.”

  And here Richard stood on the stump of the tree and repeated Henry V’s hallowed words as if they were the sort of thing he (Richard) should have said as a king before skipping about and sitting on the dank and dirty ground:

  If we are marked to die, we are enough

  To do our country loss, and if to live,

  The fewer the men, the greater share of honour.

  “Don’t miss the shift in language, either,” Henry V advised Ginny. “When my father publically accepted the crown he had prised from Richard II, he did so in English, not in French. I used English to rally people to our great cause and I issued my war commands in English.”

  “Well, French or English, subtle shift or not, it’s too late now to stop the battle and its carnage,” said Richard. “Today you, dear young lady, will experience the triumph and tragedy of the battle of Agincourt as never before.”

  Indeed, Ginny then saw Henry himself mounted upon a small grey horse with a richly jewelled crown around his helmet. He had all his horsemen—including himself—send their horses back to the rear of the little army.

  Thus, it was that Henry led his men into battle. Despite his men-at-arms being exhausted, outnumbered and malnourished, the battle was going to be vehement. As if Ginny could not see and interpret things herself, the swan still at her side and still chained to the antelope (but not to the cresset) told her what to think.

  “King Henry has drawn up his forces with his archers in six wedge-shaped formations, each supported by a body of men-at-arms, tut tut. He takes personal command. The flanks of his army are protected by woods. They prevent the French committing their entire force at the same time, tut tut.”

  The gentler, more cautious antelope took over.

  “The French rely too much on their cavalry. They think they have an initial advantage. That’s short sighted. When the English longbows strike them, there’s no room to rotate the horses. The result will be a massacre. It’s perfectly dreadful.”

  Ginny saw it fell out just as the heraldic antelope and swan had predicted. She was wary of the swan and its threatening wing span but she warmed to the gentle antelope and put her arms around its neck.

  As had been the case with Edward III at Crecy sixty years earlier, the French were unduly crowded in their three dense lines, each thirty men deep. Neither their cross-bowmen nor their cannon could fire effectively upon the enclosed English ranks. Still confident of breaking Henry’s lines, the French moved forward down the slope, plodding heavily through a ploughed field that had already been trampled into a quagmire. And, as at Crecy, the long-bow destroyed all before it.

  “They do say,” interjected the antelope quietly so that the swan would not hear, “that every goose that ever there was in the southern counties of England was at Agincourt at least in spirit because it had been obliged to yield six of its feathers to speed our English longbows.”

  The swan had heard this and added a saucy comment of its own.

  “This isn’t polite. Some people say that the use of two fingers to pull the bow in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries led to the English antisocial use of two fingers as a derogatory gesture, tut tut.”

  The soles of Ginny’s sneakers were thin. She could feel the ground’s indentations underfoot: the hard ridges of a ploughed field, sometimes squishy when bogged by rain, sometimes crisp and crunchy when kissed by frost.

  Richard II was not going to let Henry V’s two animals explain things better than he did. Death must take precedence. That was his attitude.

  “See, the French reinforcements have struggled over their fallen comrades. The English archers just sling their bows and plunge forward on horse and foot upon the reeling squadrons. They slash them with their swords.”

  Ginny got a heavy wallop from the mutilated lower arm of some poor soldier. She recoiled as it fell unwanted on the moist ground.

  “You’ve had it easy so far—standing by while battles rage. But let’s get you up closer, so close that you’re inside. This time,” Richard II added, “dear little Ginny has to fly through the bat
tle of Agincourt as the battle itself—as the battle weapons themselves.”

  Ginny did not know what to make of this. How could she be the centre of a battle but not as a soldier or an onlooker? She soon discovered. It was like a never-ending scream when you were immersed in a violent wind, blowing you this way and that amid dark swords and black axes, your whole body undulating as it tossed and turned. She felt her body had turned to slivery jelly but her bones, like irritating shards of piercing glass, were being buffeted inside her.

  When this stage of the battle was over, Ginny found herself dumped unceremoniously on the dank ground as if she was some discarded blood-spattered rag doll.

  The superior voice of Richard II was still in her ear resounding with nice-seeming but truly dismissive comments.

  “You should feel honoured. It was like being the centre of a storm in music—but not a storm as experienced by people on the ground. No. It was like music by those precious composer visitors to our shores, Handel and Haydn. In majestic music, they conjure up magical threatening storms of thunder and lightning that are the epicentres of their storms.”

  While Ginny wanted to think of the many slain men as hapless victims of unending royal quarrels, she was disturbed to sense that the recently killed folk were almost reaching up to her for solace. They were like unsettled spirits who bore the cruel marks of their grisly ends from brutal sword slashes or savage chest wounds. It was creepy.

  “It’s not a simple clear-cut victory,” said a low baritone voice from somewhere to the right below Ginny. “Victory never is. There are consequences now and later—expected and unexpected.”

  Ginny glanced down. Then she looked more closely at the stump of the tree: the stock eradiated was speaking in this quiet but angry baritone sound.

  “Get ready. Be prepared. The third French line has retreated without even attempting to challenge the English. They’ve had a chance but they’ve blown it. Just you watch. The French camp followers and peasants who’ve been wandering around the edge of the battle are about to break into the English camp right here.”

 

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