The Hooded Men

by David Pilling

  “I will not wear this again,” he shouted, “until I have recovered all the rights and lands belonging to the crown granted away by my father.”

  Shocked whispers drifted around the nave as Edward turned to the archbishop and thrust the circlet back into his hands. Dumbfounded, the old man started to visibly tremble. For one terrible moment it seemed he might drop the crown and collapse in a heap.

  Edward ignored him. “Today marks a new beginning,” he cried. “For too long England has been racked by civil discord. No longer. Let this proclamation be carried through the land. From this day forth, justice shall be maintained everywhere in England. The guilty shall be hanged, even knights and great men. Justices, bailiffs and sheriffs shall take no bribes. The strong shall not prey on the weak. Let all those who refuse to live under the king’s law beware! There is no hiding place from justice!”

  His words rang down the length of the nave. Edward paused to eyeball his subjects, like a biblical prophet looming over his followers. There were no cheers, no babble, just stunned silence.

  Edward slowly descended the steps to the altar. The archbishop trailed after him, still holding the crown of England as though it might explode. Next came the rite of unction, an ancient and mystical part of the coronation service. The king stood on a pavement of multicoloured marble mosaic, made by Italian craftsmen during his father’s reign. Then he was stripped to the waist by monks, while Kilwardby anointed his breast, shoulder and elbows with holy oil.

  A gasp rose from hundreds of throats at the sight of Edward’s thin white torso, marked by five livid scars – one under his armpit, two on the chest, one across his lean belly, another scored down his ribcage. The flesh had puckered over each of the wounds, disfiguring him for life.

  As the oil was applied, the choir started to sing the anthem Unxerunt Salomonen – “They Anointed Solomon”. The rousing chorus swelled until it filled the huge church:

  Unxerunt Salomonem Sadoc sacerdos et Nathan propheta regem in Gihon et abierunt laeti dicentes vivat rex in aeternum alleluia…”

  The supreme moment of the coronation had arrived. Edward gasped as the chrism, the holiest of oil, was poured over his head. Bliss washed over him. Fire coursed through his soul, purging him of sin, washing away his past. As the anthem surged to its peak, Edward’s being fused with the Holy Spirit.

  He stretched out his arms. No longer a man, but an anointed king. God’s representative on earth.

  So it begins.

  * * *

  After the ceremony, the feast. No expense had been spared. Edward was determined the splendour of his coronation would be remembered for generations. It marked a glorious new start for his kingdom, a clear break with the evils of the past.

  The king took his place at the banquet at the head of the table, above the dais in the great feasting hall of Westminster. At his side was his beloved Eleanor, shining in her glory as England’s new queen, her brow decorated with a silver coronet. She blushed and laughed, merry on too much wine, as the great men of the land came and knelt before the dais. The King of Scots came with a hundred knights in his retinue, each man cloaked and spurred. Not to be outdone, the earls of England also brought a hundred knights each. There was no space in the hall for so many men, so the knights dismounted outside and turned their horses loose for anyone to keep who could catch them.

  Edward didn’t allow the carefree atmosphere of the feast go to his head. He drank little, and barely acknowledged the earls of Clare and Warenne. These two were still under a cloud of royal displeasure. He knew all about the recent failed rebellion, and their part in it.

  Other men would have hanged for less, but Edward chose to let it lie. After himself, the earls were the greatest power in England. He could not move against them without risking another war.

  Patience, my lords, he thought, exchanging cool nods with the red-headed Gilbert Clare. You will soon be put to the test.

  Not every earl was present. Robert Ferrers, Earl of Derby and Edward’s great enemy, lay in a deep dungeon in the Tower. After the brutal storming of Chartley, in which most of his followers were put to the sword, he had surrendered to Edward’s brother, Prince Edmund. Afterwards he was put in a cage, mounted on the back of a wagon, and paraded through the streets of London like a trapped animal.

  Edward’s advisers had urged him to kill the man. No earl had ever been executed in England, but Ferrers was a special case.

  “He is a born traitor,” argued Robert Burnell. “We cannot trust him, any more than a mad wolf. If Ferrers is set free, he will soon go back to his old ways. So long as he lives, England will never truly be at peace.”

  Others on the royal council supported Burnell. They wanted Ferrers’s head on a spike, and Edward was sorely tempted to bow to their wishes. Few would have blamed him. There was also their personal rivalry to consider. Ferrers had conducted a private feud against Edward for years, and out of sheer spite done his best to destroy the realm.

  Or place the crown on his own head…

  Edward had to suppress a laugh at the thought of King Robert. The man had lost two wars and thrown away the earldom painstakingly built up by his ancestors. How long would he survive? England had endured bad kings in the past, but there were limits.

  Yet Edward refused to kill him. “A new reign should not start in blood,” he told his advisers. None of their pleas or arguments could change his mind. The king’s will was final.

  The same mercy was shown to Ferrers’s lieutenant, Roger Godberd. Captured at Nottingham, he now cooled his heels inside Bridgenorth prison in Shropshire. Edward had other reasons for sparing Godberd’s life. The man was a useful soldier and had spent years leading the king’s men a merry dance in the forests of Leicester and Nottinghamshire. It was a shame to waste such talent. Edward would have need of good fighters in the years to come.

  Most of the other rebels had come into the peace – Lord Audley, the Marcher baron, Sir James Chandos, Sir John d’Eyvill. Again Edward preferred not to waste useful fighting men. Edward meant to whip these dogs of war to heel.

  Only one held out. Sir John’s brother, who called himself Robin Hode, chose to ignore the king’s pardon. He and his band of motley followers stayed in the greenwood, the deep forests of Sherwood and Barnsdale, from where they preyed on sheriffs and bishops and thumbed their noses at the king’s justice. Robin and his men were already passing into legend.

  They were an irritant, nothing more. A thorn in the side of Reynold Grey, High Sheriff of Nottingham. It was his job to destroy Robin Hode, and the king wished him good hunting. For the present, he had greater affairs to attend to.

  When the feast reached its climax, Edward rose to dub new knights. Most of these were young men, squires who had reached the age of knighthood. A few had earned their spurs helping to put down the revolt.

  The first to kneel before the king was Richard Giffard, nephew of the baron of Brimpsfield. He had suffered many wounds in the storm of Chartley and still not recovered. His right arm was in a sling, his head and one eye swathed in a double layer of bandages.

  “Arise, Sir Richard Giffard,” said Edward, lightly tapping the flat of his sword on Richard’s shoulders. “You have done good service, and will do again, I trust.”

  The young knight rose, wincing in pain. Edward kissed him on both cheeks and waited for him to shuffle away, to be embraced by his uncle.

  Ten more youths knelt before the king and were dubbed knights. Then something unusual occurred. Four servants entered carrying a stretcher, upon which lay the pale and wasted body of Hugh Longsword.

  A hush fell over the hall. Even the musicians fell silent, and the king’s acrobats and jesters ceased their capering. The stretcher was gently laid at Edward’s feet.

  He looked down at his servant. Hugh lay under a blanket, his head propped up on a bolster. His pallor was that of a week-old corpse, flesh drawn tight over the fragile bones of his face. Someone – a blind barber, to judge from the ugly result – had taken a
knife to his hair.

  At least he was conscious. He blinked, and feebly raised a hand.

  “Hail, King Edward,” he whispered. Bright red blood trickled between his teeth and oozed slowly down his chin.

  Edward stooped to wipe the blood away with his sleeve. “Master Longsword,” he said heavily. “The last time we met, you were whole and upright, and I was flat on my back. Now our roles are reversed.”

  Hugh said nothing. He swallowed, and his hand fell limply onto the blanket. Edward had ordered his personal physician to save Hugh’s life. Not that the king felt any guilt over his servant’s fate. Edward was a stranger to guilt, and Hugh had merely done his duty. But he had redeemed himself in the king’s eyes. Another useful talent, not to be wasted.

  “I am told you will live,” said the king. “And, in time, be whole again. Fit for service. You must have some strength in you. When my knights fished you out of the gatehouse at Chartley, you were bleeding from every hole.”

  Hugh didn’t respond. His eyes had flickered shut, his face slackened. Edward would get no more out of him today, or several days to come.

  “When you wake,” said the king, loud enough for all to hear. “You will be a different man.”

  He raised his sword and lightly touched the blade on Hugh’s shoulders.

  “Arise – when you can! – Sir Hugh Longsword.”

  END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The revolt in England against Edward I (reigned 1272-1307) is a little-known event, barely discussed or acknowledged outside academia. By 1273 Edward had been absent from the kingdom for four years, and the death of his father, Henry III, in November 1272 had a destabilising effect on a country barely recovered from the Second Baron’s War. That war seemed to have ended in 1267, when King Henry recovered London, but many of the rebels were waiting for a chance to take up arms again.

  Henry’s death, and the weakness of the regency government, gave them that chance. The ringleader, as in my novel, was Robert Ferrers (1239-79), 6th Earl of Derby. Ferrers was a violent and unpredictable character with a personal grudge against Edward and his younger brother, Prince Edmund. In 1269 the royal brothers, with the connivance of their father, swindled Ferrers out of his inheritance and left him without lands. The idea was to render him harmless, but instead Ferrers exploited the power vacuum in England to mount a dangerous rebellion.

  In the event the rebellion was crushed and Ferrers was captured after the fall of his last stronghold, Chartley Castle in Staffordshire. King Edward, usually perceived as a cruel and ruthless monarch, spared the earl’s life and that of his supporters, including Roger Godberd.

  As for Hugh Longsword, he has survived – just – the fallout of the civil wars in England. The long and eventful reign of Edward I, known as Longshanks or the Hammer of the Scots, is about to begin. What part Hugh will play in this bold new world remains to be seen…