Midnight in Westminster Abbey

by Sean Dennis Cashman

  And from her position now in the rear, Ginny saw the two most controversial incidents in this terrible battle.

  Some of the French camp followers had attacked the rear of Henry’s army. They started pillaging the unprotected ground and stole the king’s special ceremonial crown, wardrobe and Great Seal. In the confusion, Henry believed his army was being surrounded and in more danger in the rear.

  Thus provoked, Henry ordered the slaughter of all French prisoners. Only the most illustrious of the French nobility were spared. The others had expected to survive the battle facing no worse a price than having to wait to be ransomed. The English suppressed the problem in the rear of the camp but, by then, more unfortunate Frenchmen had been massacred.

  The noise, the smell, the sight of men hurtling themselves at one another with such ferocity and with apparent disregard for their loyal horses—all these experiences had crashed into Ginny’s brain. She thought she would be made senseless with outrage. It was too much. The last thing she wanted was a touch of Harry in the night—or anywhere else.

  Despite the debris and carnage, the overwhelming smell in Ginny’s nostrils was of large lilies, so pungent and penetrating that it made her head giddy as if she were spinning round and round. She screamed with such fury that the sight around her did crash on her like a multi-car pile-up on a modern highway. She knew she had fallen with a bump but she did not dare open her eyes. But when the sound died down, she did gulp and open her eyes. She was lying on the ground but she was not alone. A woman beside her was nestling her in her lap.

  The woman was sheltering both Ginny and herself from the threatening shadow of a man on a horse. Instinctively, Ginny knew the horseman was the sinister version of Richard II in his alter ego of Death aka the Grim Reaper with the outsize scythe on his cloak. He circled around the battlefield. And as his horse cantered to a nearby hillock, he looked around with grim satisfaction. In her hearing aid, Ginny heard his inner thoughts as sharply as she had heard his comments after the battle of Crecy:

  “The English think they have won but it’s me who is victorious. I’ve done these warriors a great service. Think about it. Their earthly kings set the common soldiers at odds against one another but I join them together in the peace of the grave. Of course, I have to kill them all to do it. Once the men and boys are laid to rest this evening, they will rise in the night to attend my grave roll call.”

  Determined to shut such harsh ideas out of her mind, Ginny asked her new companion, “Was I having a nightmare?”

  She sensed this fair woman was kind.

  “No, dear child,” came the answer. “You fainted. It’s understandable. The battle of Agincourt was just like that—terrible for the French, of course, because of their heavy losses. But just as bad for both nations in the long run. War always is. It makes men’s lives even more brutal and far shorter than they would otherwise be.”

  Behind the tender woman Ginny saw King Death was still there and with plenty to gloat about. The kind woman handed Ginny a small paper cup with water. “Drink this,” she said.

  When Ginny sat up to sip the water, she saw the woman was wearing a modern black dress and exquisite long black gloves as if she was ready for a formal church service. Her fragrant perfume was as intoxicating as the lilies of death earlier had been stifling.

  “Are you going to a funeral?” Ginny asked, looking around and realising that she was back in the chantry chapel of Henry V.

  “Do you need to ask? You’ve just seen the battle of Agincourt. I’ve attended more funerals than I care to remember—far less count the victims.”

  Ginny now detected a mixed accent. The woman sounded both French and Welsh. How could that be?

  “What happened to King Henry?” was all Ginny asked.

  “His victory at Agincourt made Henry’s position as king and warrior unassailable. It was as if—said the English priests—that God had tested him and his right to the French throne and he had proved that right by might.”

  As the tender woman said this, it sounded almost like a rehearsed voice-over for a TV documentary. Yet Ginny sensed that the woman’s heart and mind were somewhere else. Despite her total revulsion to these vicious wars, Ginny still wanted to know more about this famous victory at Agincourt.

  “Could Henry V succeed in his vision of unity between England and France?”

  “Many were sceptical and disliked the enormous cost,” replied the gentle woman. "But in Normandy and Aquitaine, many were ready to accept whoever brought them some law and order—including the priests and monks at their books and the few people who had enough time to think strategically. These people thought that the Valois regime had lost its legitimacy.

  “It was what you moderns would call a trade-off. They got peace and stability—better than the alternative. Therefore, it was worth putting up with military control.”

  Without any signpost to mark the change, Ginny understood that now it was she who was asking the questions—not her interviewer kings.

  Now Ginny started to appraise this charming woman. Again she sensed that the woman seemed to speak English like someone born outside England whose English accent really did bear other traces—French certainly—and were there really some Welsh inflections?

  While she was mulling over this, Henry V’s three little heralds reappeared twirling and jiving, almost Ginny thought, like a backing group for a teen heartthrob pop singer. The swan decided to camp things up. It stood on its webbed feet and practically hurled out accusations with an indecorous spit:

  “Yes, Charles the dauphin was furious beyond reason at King Henry’s success: ‘Ma foi! Quel malheur!’” it cried in mock outrage. “Tut tut. ‘Quel dommage! Quel frommage!’ Tut tut.”

  To underline its parody, the swan ran hither and thither, flapping its wings in pretend horror. Ginny thought it was like a demented Disney cartoon. It took the gentle lady to calm things down and restore order.

  “Who are you?” Ginny now dared to ask, wondering if this new stranger was a professional mourner paid to honour dead soldiers.

  The woman smiled sadly.

  Richard II was behind them and back in his priest’s dull cassock. Death always had a ready explanation.

  “She’s one of the many widowed queens who live here. Please meet Her Majesty Queen Katherine, daughter of Charles VI of France, queen to Henry V, mother of Henry VI and grandmother of Henry VII, patriarch of the Tudor dynasty.” Turning to Katherine, he added, “This is Ginny. She comes from New York.”

  Katherine extended her gloved hand to Ginny. Ginny rose rather awkwardly and curtsied without making a reply since she had, most unusually, lost her voice. To smooth over Ginny’s embarrassment, Katherine said, “Enchantée, ma chere.” Then she added something in Welsh that Ginny did not understand but assumed was a compliment.

  Richard continued with his tart comments.

  “In England, Henry made the most of his victory. Even before the peace treaty, he rode in triumph through the streets of London, not only king of England but soon to be king of France—the supreme figure of Western Europe. As he rode his steed through the capital, the air was heavy with the yelling of the crowd and the rank smell of ale and oysters.”

  Taking stock of the chantry chapel anew, Ginny looked with fresh eyes on nearby statues of various kings. She was not surprised to notice statues of the patron saints of England and France. For England, St George having slain the dragon was conventional enough. But France fared unhappily with its patron saint, St Denis, holding his head in his hands in mourning for French losses.

  “But the war was far from over,” added Katherine. “Henry renewed his campaign. It proved arduous. By the Treaty of Troyes of May 1420, Henry became regent of France and heir to the French throne after the death of my father, Charles VI. The supposed fusion of England and France was to be cemented in part by family marriages, including our own. I was part and parcel of the English prize.”

  “Damn right,” said Henry V behind Katherine.
“Everyone looked upon my famous victories as the crowning glory of the Plantagenet dynasty.”

  Richard II would not let royal husband and wife escape his censure.

  “The peace did not last. The dauphin rebelled against the treaty and Henry began to plan a third expedition.”

  The antelope said, “Henry held Paris but he needed help from his allies and more funds. You see, the voice of doom is always present: more funds, firmer allies or you’re going to fail. Doom and doomsayers insist on being heard.”

  Ever the peacemaker, Katherine ran an imaginary curtain down on the tragedy with a tender farewell:

  “Dear Henry was visibly failing. We thought he had chronic dysentery. His chamberlain said it was pleurisy. Anyway, it was obvious to all of us that he was dying. He spent his last months in arranging for the education of our infant son and for government after his death. Pauvre garçon.”

  At this, Ginny saw the swan, the antelope and the stock of wood leap silently onto and into Henry V’s cloak and again become faded embroidery. As if comforted by the return of his heraldic devices, Henry became more modest.

  “In Westminster Abbey, I’m not a useless king or a skipping king. I’m an incomplete king. For six centuries, my heart and other internal organs—I’m being tactful here—were in a box in a place outside Fosses near Paris. It’s just like our reputations and our legends—good and bad—we’re all incomplete. It’s best to leave it that way.”

  Once again, Ginny heard the mellifluous soaring abbey chant of piping trebles and growly basses—almost an octave lower than she had ever heard such voices. Again, this glorious sound seemed to fall like musical manna from on high.

  “Good, isn’t it?” said Henry with quiet confidence. “Damn right.”

  “My dad told me that in your reign choral music soared both in quality and quantity,” Ginny said.

  “It’s my most lasting achievement,” said Henry V. “I encouraged choral music—lots of it—and of such quality, melodious and—dare I say it?—voluptuousness.”

  Yet this lovely music was not just some anonymous background music with nothing in front of it. It sounded lively and assertive. As if he could still read her thoughts, Henry V said, “Foreign visitors to London didn’t like to admit it but our choirs sang better than theirs did in continental Europe. One of the Venetian ambassadors said of the way we English sang, ‘They didn’t just sing, they jubilated’.”

  Such praise prompted another tart remark from Richard II.

  “Yet Death always has the last word,” he said. “Winning the battle is no good unless you go on to win the war. England proved to France that it was the master of battles. But France proved that England could not conquer France nor even hold the lands it did occupy.”

  Katherine added ruefully, “It was just how we—the French—and you—the Americans—say in a joined-up phrase, ‘Déjà vu all over again’.”

  “Indeed,” concluded Richard II not so gently, “within a generation, the empire of Henry V had melted away like the illusory idea it had always been.”

  “Power isn’t something absolute, fixed, everlasting,” admitted Henry V. “Don’t you agree?” he asked Ginny. “And that is my question before you meet your next interviewers, the Tudors. The answer is a matter of opinion. Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and give your reasons.”

  “Well,” answered Ginny gravely, “my dad says history teaches us that nothing is more difficult than to use great power well.” Taking a deep breath, she repeated a lesson Charlie had drilled into her: “He’s always repeating some pundit saying that the serious military, diplomatic, and economic decisions you kings take depend for success on how accurately you measure your power; how truly you see its possibilities within its limitations. So, that’s my answer.”

  Ginny suppressed a little sigh of relief. She really had had to learn that little speech. And she had been able to dredge it up from the recesses of her mind just when she needed it.

  “You’re right. The wisdom that encourages great kings to do good things can only come through true humility,” Richard concluded. “I don’t like to admit it but Henry V seemed to know that instinctively. He also had—at least some of the time—good manners and courtesy. It’s true what they say: a generous spirit can make great power acceptable to others.”

  Ginny felt reborn again. She had passed another test. Could a magic knife cut through the invisible but impregnable fabric of this Plantagenet world so that she really could move onto the Tudors? Would she meet Georgie in the Tudor court where queens outnumbered kings? Yet Ginny had found all the Plantagenet tutorials mentally intoxicating. At her side, Katherine of Valois was aware of time passing.

  “It really is time for us to move on—just like quick-change artists in your light entertainment shows on TV.”

  She lowered a large dark cloak to the ground and drew Ginny into its folds. Katherine pulled it up over both their heads. She shimmied within the enveloping material, turning it into a column of rippling cloth until both she and Ginny had disappeared. The cloak then fell empty to the ground. The queen and the accidental history tourist had vanished.

  3 THE QUEENS’ PARTY

  GEORGIE AND THE DRAGONS

  As he moved down the south aisle of the abbey looking for his sister, young Georgie Chancer found himself drawn to an ornate tomb with a canopy. Yes, it was elaborate and fantastic. When Georgie heard voices, he hid in a recess in the wall. Listening intently, he could make out words coming from the tomb.

  “Lizzie, move your hot ass. It’s stifling in here. I can’t break on through to the other side. What a load. You’ve really put on weight since last year.”

  Inside the tomb, Mary was in one of her famous tempers. But her younger sister, no stranger to bad temper herself, was not going to be cowed.

  “Fat ass? Weight? You’re no sugar puff yourself,” she answered back.

  Despite her resentment of Lizzie’s supposed great weight pressing down on her—not to mention her ready lip in answering back—Mary knew there was nothing she could do but push harder if she was going to get anywhere. First by jiggling her body, then twisting it to left and right, she began to create cracks in the mass above her. She was certainly not going to give up. The dust and debris were oppressive. But still she would not give up. She forced her spindly arms out from what fragments remained of her tattered shroud and began to heave. Her gangly hands and wrists shoved her sister above her even harder. Then Mary fell back exhausted. Every inch she advanced cost her tears of puny anguish.

  “Stop it!” said Lizzie, forcing her threadbare voice. She wanted to sound imperious. “I had more years in charge than you,” continued Lizzie. “You may be older than me but I lived longer and now our status is reversed.”

  Yet every word that came from Lizzie’s parched lips came out not like the order of someone in command but as the whimper of a spoilt child who could not get her way.

  “Stop it! Stop it, I say!” she whispered helplessly.

  If Lizzie even half expected a pointless quarrel with Mary, her elder sister, she was going to be disappointed for now Mary changed her tone.

  “Lizzie, we have to get up, to get up and rise and shine. It’s our night of nights. Our once-a-year night of revelry.”

  With that, Lizzie’s tone also changed from imperious defiance to quivering expectation: “Party time?”

  “Yes, sister dearest: party time. I thought that would tickle your fancy and give you an adrenaline rush—whatever phrase they use nowadays.”

  “It’s All Souls’ already? Party time! Party time!” Lizzie almost squealed with delight. “Party time, party time,” she chanted. “Just like the old days—my royal progresses from country estate to country estate.”

  “From country estate to country estate? Something I’d hate,” countered Mary with jealous disdain.

  Lizzie was not to be put down. “A country estate? What’s not to like? Think of the treasures. Gathering diamonds and pearls like rosebuds in May.”
>
  “Well, if you want a repeat performance tonight, you’d better move now. Whatever our differences in life, we have to work together, cooperate—whatever diplomatic language you care to use. Heave together.”

  Without admitting to her sister that she was right, Lizzie did as Mary asked her. Now they heaved at the same time. But it was not enough. They both fell back, Lizzie still above Mary. Their creaking frames were exhausted by the sheer effort. But still they did not give up.

  “I can see a crack, a little shaft of light,” said Lizzie encouragingly.

  “Then next time, we don’t just heave together. We must heave in unison,” said Mary, adding for good measure, “Like court musicians at the end of a song. One, two, heave,” she ordered her younger sister.

  Lizzie was now more intent on breaking through to the other side than insisting on her precedence as the longer serving queen. Before she agreed to try just one more heave, she saw another crack of light and then a second crack.

  “Light, light—dull light but light all the same. We can do it. One, two, three, heave with all your might and main.”

  From the side lines in his nook and cranny, young Georgie knew something special was going to happen. He stood perfectly still.

  And that was it. They—whoever they were—pushed together and this time they made it. As they broke through, the casing just above Mary—separating her tomb from Lizzie’s—broke. It sent splinters of wood and shivers of stone sideways. Now Lizzie’s stone and marble tomb cracked. Then it exploded. The face on the supine effigy representing her above the tomb broke with a smile of deep contentment. Then the two women burst out. Mary positively blasted through Lizzie’s spindly frame, breaking through bones that miraculously re-assembled into something resembling a human frame. As the exploding body fragments hit the ceiling of the ornamental canopy over the tomb, the bang had the effect of galvanising and re-uniting the sisters’ various body parts into two coherent wholes.