Angry, James VI stood stock still in disbelief. Young Anne of Denmark stood confused as she tried to work out what had happened and why.
“I need to sit down, dear,” she said and promptly tumbled onto the dank abbey paving and began to shiver uncontrollably. James VI did not want this. But his unwanted sense of decorum took over. Instinctively, he took off his schoolboy’s cape and set it tentatively on Anne’s shivering shoulders. He set his face grimly as he had as a bullied child. Here was a young girl conjured out of air to dent his boyhood.
Then, equally unwanted, he heard one of his unseen bullying uncles say in his ear, “Laddie, whatever you get, you’re never satisfied. Grin and bear it like a man.” Just in case boy King James VI had not got the point, he heard a swishing noise ending with a thwack. Although James VI knew he was beyond the pain of corporal punishment, the very sound shook his whole body. It was like a bloody battering of uncontrollable fear.
Other sovereigns had comparable disappointments. The child Henry III knew he was lost without his grown-up son, Edward I, to guide and protect him. And Edward III had always wanted to swap war stories with his great grandson, Henry V, but the man Henry V was nowhere to be seen. Besides, Edward III was already missing Queen Philippa.
Charles II told him, “You only have yourself to blame. Philippa is on the outside. She needs your help—our help—as much as you need hers and you’ve squandered the chance, wasted your wish with this Boy’s Own nonsense from Anne of Bohemia. You and your pathetic little crew—you’re an absolute shower!”
Edward III said nothing in reply. He and the former boy kings had wanted a second, better chance of childhood. It seemed it came at a price: separation from their relatives whom absence now made fonder.
“This is what we wanted. This is what we asked for,” said James VI who read everyone’s thoughts. “So, we’d better make the most of it.”
But, while the boy kings had to take a reality check about their new situation the general mood inside Westminster Abbey remained joyous. Another cry rose from the royal animals and other heraldic devices—enough to fill the abbey to the rafters: “Long live Anne, our new queen for a day!”
And so, the gaudy animals and heraldic devices clustered around Anne of Bohemia. She found herself hoisted onto the white hart of Richard II, draped anew in someone’s ceremonial cloak. Someone else set the original gold circlet of Henry III on her head. The other disappointed queens looked shamefaced. Their husbands, however, joined in the joyous salutations: Salve Regina.
As Ginny moved forward towards Georgie, she felt someone behind her tugging at her top and then holding her body in a tight grip.
“Not so fast, Little Miss Minx,” said a superior voice behind her. “Not so fast.”
Ginny knew the voice immediately from his recent stage performance. It filled her core with the sort of dread that (although she did not yet know this) it also had on her father, Charlie: such an unctuous, insinuating, reptilian and yet authoritative voice as Charles II had.
“I think before we let you go, we have to ask you some more questions.”
Before Ginny could respond, Mary Tudor was on the scene.
“That’s not fair. Ginny answered all the questions the Plantagenet kings set her. In fact, she passed every test with flying colours. She’s here by stint of her own efforts. We cannot go back on our royal word of honour.”
“Those may be your words, but I’m the big cheese here in this afterlife. This little minx and her family have caused us no end of trouble. Besides, she sees and understands too much for her own good—or ours. So, kindly allow me my own little divertissement,” Charles II answered with icy insistence.
With that, he clicked his fingers. Brutal halberdiers reappeared and escorted Ginny silently away, leaving Georgie in the hallowed crush of boy king wannabes.
FIVE-A-SIDE FOOTBALL
“What shall we do? How can we exercise—no—prove our new liberty in our second childhoods?” Richard II asked the other children. Immediately, he regretted his question.
“There’s the chase, the hunt, the joust,” answered Edward III. “And let’s mention dancing and feasting—if you get my drift.” Then Edward III also regretted his remark. He might have now looked like a strapping youth in all his glory but inside him, he had the cares and worries of a man worn out by politics and war.
“We should choose a modern entertainment,” said innocent child Henry III. “We’ve all sneaked a peek at modern TV with its celebrities, its reality shows and its sports.”
“That’s right,” agreed mischievous boy James VI. “Let’s go with the new flow. There’s spectator sports—plenty to choose from. I bet the necessary costumes and gear—that’s the word I was looking for—are here somewhere—if you know where to look.”
The new boy kings turned to Georgie for advice.
“There’s always football,” Georgie said helpfully.
What Henry III was thinking was, “We kings have the chance to enjoy childhood as we couldn’t in life or think afresh what we might have done better in the past. And there’s life, death, heaven and earth for us to think about. And what the others are thinking about is games.” But what Henry III said aloud was, “Oh well,” as he popped a pickled plum into his mouth.
Then, thinking of Georgie as the unexpected leader of these disparate and desperate royal children, Henry III added, “Georgie’s right. Football is known the world over. There’s American football, of course, and two English varieties—soccer and rugby—itself divided into two forms. Now there’s women’s football as well. It’s caught on in the States even more than blue-collar men’s football.”
“Well, that’s settled then,” said Edward III who was ready for something competitive. He rubbed his hands together.
“I thought you outlawed football,” Richard II said. “Supposedly on pain of death. You wanted every man to practice archery to be ready for your military campaigns.”
“So I did,” said Richard’s younger-than-ever grandfather. “That was then and this is now. I’ve learnt that sports help men sublimate their warlike energies into something the powers that be can control. Besides, I hear the pay is better in football.”
“But there aren’t enough players here,” interrupted Georgie. Then a royal thought creased his brow. “If your courts of animals and heralds will help, we could put together two teams for five-a-side-football.”
“Five-a-side football?” asked Edward VI. “What’s that?”
George was on the mark straight away. His mom had told him that whatever you learned at school would always come in use sooner or later. Only a month ago, when everyone in his class gave a short presentation about a particular sport, Georgie chose five-a-side football since other students had already chosen other football games to talk about. So now, Georgie was well primed:
"Football is a mass spectator sport first in the UK and now across the world. There are eleven players in each of two teams in English football, also called soccer, like I said. The object is for each team to score goals against the other side. The goal keeper can use his hands but the other players (working together) can only use their feet and sometimes their heads.
"Five-a-side football is a variation of this association football. It’s usually on a smaller makeshift pitch in which each team fields only five players—four on the field and one as goalkeeper, like I said. And the game lasts sixty minutes instead of ninety.
“The penalty area is semi-circular in shape. Only the goalkeeper is allowed to touch the ball within it and he can give the ball out to another player by hand. The goalkeeper may only kick the ball if he’s making a save. There are no offside rules. Headers are not allowed. Yellow cards may result in the offending player being sent to the ‘sin bin’ for a predetermined length of time. And,” added Georgie with another regal thought, “we could use the cloisters to play in.”
“Cloisters! Football!” rose an omnibus cry from the surrounding court of little animals eager to be up
and at them.
“Straight away,” said Edward V. He and his brother, Richard, carried away by an unspoken thought about wreaking havoc on the red and white roses in the cloisters that had been detested objects in their enforced gardening for hundreds of years.
There were enough Plantagenet kings to make up one team. The other team would have to come from both Tudors and Stuarts. Because Georgie found it difficult to say ‘Tudors and Stuarts’—which in his accent came out something like ‘Chudors’—the second team agreed to amalgamate their name into this comical, gum-chewing-sounding combination.
“It’s better this way,” said Edward VI in a rare moment of humour. “If we stay with ‘Tudors and Stuarts’, it makes us sound like a disease.”
The smallest boys and tiniest animals fell about laughing till they collapsed on the floor in two little heaps of giggles.
“But we don’t have a ball,” said Edward VI.
“You have us,” said a chorus of tiny voices.
The kings looked down. There were three little ermine, standing on their hind legs as if singing ‘Greensleeves’ on tiptoes and ready to play a virginal that way.
“Look,” said the determined ermine in unison.
They clasped their front feet like hands and then rolled together burying their spiky claws together to make a tight squelchy ball.
Around them other heraldic animals gathered in two opposite sides of the cloisters, some on the grass, others peeping through gaps in the ornamental stone window frames. There was a general squealing of happy expectation. It was as if, since the heraldic animals and other royal devices had worked their imaginary socks off in service to the royals for hundreds of years now, in a topsy-turvy twelfth night of reversed roles, these little fellows wanted the royals to serve them up some richly deserved entertainment. The heady atmosphere was also tense. The boy royals felt it keenly and knew they had to step up to the mark and play the game as if their souls depended on it.
Before Edward III could point out that there were no goal posts, two columns of little animals assembled like regimented troops carrying long slender wooden columns from the spare building tackle left by Henry III and James I. Using the tools to hand, the little beasties hammered the columns into place to fashion two goal posts fit for royal five-a-side football. The Golden Lion and the Silver Unicorn wanted to be goalkeepers. They got their wish.
Without thinking, the Plantagenet team assumed their leader must be the oldest member, Edward III, at seventeen going on eighteen. After all, he had been the most authoritative young king ever since he had seized full power—even if he had been opposed to football in his lifetime.
The most senior royal there, Henry III, was more than happy to withdraw and be a spare on the bench. He hated battles. Even this play battle was too much for him. So Henry III hunkered down in a nest of fledgling birds, explaining rather sheepishly, “I’m the original coronation chicken.” Richard II had always wanted to be the leader in life but, after considerable reflection in death, he decided he should try and be a team player.
The Tudors and Stuarts were undecided about their leader. None of the boy kings wanted any of the others to captain the team. Nor did they want to select a leader by drawing straws. The obvious compromise was to choose non-royal Georgie who had been taught football rules by his father. A minor and very wan royal girl whom no one recognised but who said her name was Marie volunteered to make up the number of Chudors. The only surprise for the eager animal spectators was the teams’ joint decision to nominate grown-ups as team coaches. And even more of a surprise was the teams’ choices, both of whom had a close interest in the fate of little boys: Richard III and Henry VII.
Plantagenets Tudors and Stuarts—Chudors
Edward III, captain Georgie, captain
Edward V James VI
Richard Plantagenet Edward VI
Richard II Marie
Goalkeeper: Silver Unicorn
Coach: Richard III Coach: Henry VII
Linesmen: Antelope and Swan of Henry V
Reserve: Henry III
Hovering above them all like a decorative commercial was the planta gesta, the broom flower emblem of the Angevin kings. The birds and bees had hoisted it aloft like a celebratory pennant.
Although they were playing for different teams, Edward V offered Georgie an armband embroidered with a royal crown in exchange for his baseball cap. Georgie agreed readily. Henry III noticed this but did not give this exchange a second thought at the time. Then Edward V’s brother, Richard Plantagenet, and Georgie exchanged tops: Richard’s doublet for Georgie’s jersey top.
Georgie said matter-of-factly, “When she gets back, my sister, Ginny, can be our referee.”
“But where is she? Where’s Ginny,” chorused the ermine football trio.
SIGNING OFF
Ginny found herself in a formal room with an arched ceiling supported by hammer-style beams. The walls at either end were covered by soaring dark wood shelves of books. The main area was divided into bays by mighty bookcases, crammed with later medieval tome and earlier medieval pipe rolls. There were many other books piled high from the floor. Behind a desk at one end lounged a clerk, his head bowed low over ledgers.
The young clerk looked up: lovely dark hair, cute goatee beard, fashionable tiny gold earring and devastating smile. Of course, it could only be the always upwardly mobile Sir Walter, her idolised medieval horseman and Elizabeth I’s revered merchant adventurer. He smiled unselfconsciously to Ginny. This time there was no cold politeness.
“Where am I? After the mean intervention of Mr Slime, aka Charles II, I was expecting another prison cell—not a library,” Ginny asked.
“It’s one of Westminster Abbey’s best kept secrets: a mock-up library in the style of Duke Humfrey’s Library in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University,” Sir Walter answered encouragingly. “It’s designed to impress our less literary kings with the virtues of reading—to concentrate their minds—although I think it’s rather too late for most of them.”
Yes, the library smelled of old wood, sure enough, but there were also the rank smells of medieval battles of which Ginny had sampled enough that night—not to mention pickled human sweat of the great unwashed.
Ignoring the conflicting odours, Ginny asked, “Why am I here? I was expecting another mystery trial.”
“And we aim to please,” said another voice, not unkindly. “Sit yourself down. This table will do as well as any.”
Ginny sat at the indicated immaculately scrubbed plain table. She was facing a blank pad of lined notepaper. There was a biro pen to the side. She looked up. This new interlocutor was the adorable-looking Henry V. Again she was distracted by his charismatic face with its elegant scar. He smiled encouragingly at her.
“What do you want of me? What do I have to do?” she asked.
“That’s simple. Answer the question.”
“But what’s the question? The paper is blank.”
“That’s the first part of the test. If you can guess the question, write it down and explain it. Then you will find the answer straight away. But it’s not difficult. You’ve had a whole series of little history tutorials. You answered every single question we Plantagenet kings put to you correctly—even imaginatively I would say. Damn right. My widow, Katherine of Valois, gave you clues—heavy hints really.”
Ginny did not know what to think.
On the desk, there was a small white polystyrene cup with water. She heard someone whisper as if from inside the cup. But that was impossible. Ginny looked to the left. There he was again with his youthful but manly voice—Sir Walter lounging aside one of the handsome bookcases. As she looked at him, he put a tobacco-stained finger to his lips to indicate that Ginny should follow his prompts but not talk to him.
“Ginny, just look at the polystyrene cup when you need inspiration. Just listen. Don’t acknowledge me. King Henry V has never met me. Like other kings, he’s used to servants coming and going around him. He pays
them—and me—no heed.”
Ginny’s relief at Walter’s support was intense. She knew she must not show it. She just gripped the front ledge of the table top.
“To continue,” said Sir Walter. “We exist here. We come to life because we exist perpetually in your imagination. Every time someone reads about Henry of Winchester or Edward Longshanks or Richard of Bordeaux, it’s as if they’re reborn. After all, the consequences of the actions of these kings—Henry III, Edward I and Richard II—lived on long after they had passed from the scene.”
“That’s true,” Ginny thought. “And it’s even truer of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. They’re even more vivid in novels and plays than perhaps they were in real life.”
Henry V took no notice. He was thumbing through some books and scratching his head at passages in them that he did not understand.
To encourage Ginny further, Sir Walter’s enticing voice went on as if from the white cup: “The dramas of other kings and queens are also vivid, especially the ones they themselves would rather forget: the acid reigns when things went wrong and ended badly.”
Encouraged by Sir Walter’s words and piecing together previous helpful hints and welcome clues given her by Geoffrey Chaucer and Katherine of Valois, Ginny now considered whether it was her own family who had conjured up the treacherous phantom royals and given them their particular characters.
“The unwritten, unspoken question must be, ‘Why do we kings and queens still live after we’ve gone’?”
Henry V looked up and smiled non-committedly at her. And Ginny felt so heartened by her allies that she spoke her ideas aloud as she started to write: “Every time someone reads a book or consults a reference in a library or on line, there you kings are again: reborn. Every detail of your beings—especially your personal lives—commands attention. So, if you are here because we, your readers, carry your histories into our daily lives, it’s also true that we are here because we are obsessed with you.”
Midnight in Westminster Abbey Page 27