Wonders Will Never Cease E-Book

Robert Irwin

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

It is Palm Sunday 1461 and the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil is about to take place outside the village of Towton. It is one of a series of engagements between the houses of York and Lancaster. The world when younger was more brightly coloured and its ecstasies and tortures more fiercely endured. But, ever since the Dolorous Stroke and the Showing of the Grail in the days of King Arthur, England has lain under a curse. So many have died that Hell is now full and consequently the dead stalk the land. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, having been killed at Towton, is vouchsafed the first of many strange visions before being resurrected. From then on adventures come running after him like hungry dogs and he will encounter the Swordsman's Pentacle, the Draug, the Miraculous Cauldron, the Curse of the Roasted Goose, the Talking Head and the Museum of Skulls. The real world is a poor thing compared to the stories that are told about it. Anthony hears or takes part in many stories, and those stories are porous, so that men and monsters move easily in and out of them. The stories that Anthony encounters have only one purpose and it is not a good one.

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Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperpack

WONDERS WILL NEVER CEASE

Robert Irwin (born 1946) is a novelist, historian, critic and scholar. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

He is the author of seven novels all published by Dedalus: The Arabian Nightmare, The Limits of Vision, The Mysteries of Algiers, Exquisite Corpse, Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh, Satan Wants Me and Wonders Will Never Cease.

All his novels have enjoyed substantial publicity and commercial success although he is best known for The Arabian Nightmare (1983) which has been translated into twenty languages and is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest literary fantasy novels of the twentieth century.

‘The aim of the wise is to make wonders cease.’ Albertus Magnus, De Coelo et Mundo.

‘A thing that has not been understood inevitably reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the mystery has been solved and the spell broken.’ Sigmund Freud, ‘Analysis of a Five-Year-Old Boy: Little Hans.’

List of Characters

(All those listed here really existed)

The House of Lancaster:

Henry VI: Born in 1421, he was the only son of Henry V.

He came to the throne as a minor in 1422.

Margaret of Anjou: Henry VI’s Queen.

Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales: The son of Henry and Margaret.

The House of York:

Richard Duke of York: Claimant to the throne. He was slain at the Battle of Wakefield, shortly before the narrative of Wonders Will Never Cease begins.

Edward Duke of York: Son of Richard of York. Born 1422.

Claimant to the throne and crowned in 1461 as Edward IV.

Elizabeth Woodville, from 1464 Edward’s Queen. See below, ‘Woodvilles’.

Edward, Prince of Wales: Son of Edward IV and Elizabeth, later briefly Edward V, April-June 1483.

Richard Duke of York: The younger brother of Edward V. Richard, Edward IV’s younger brother. Later Duke of Gloucester. Later Richard III.

George: Edward’s youngest brother. Later Duke of Clarence. Executed 1478.

The Woodvilles:

Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers: Born c.1410.

Jacquetta de St Pol: Daughter of the Count of St Pol.

Formerly married to John Duke of Bedford, Regent of Henry VI. After being widowed, she married Richard Woodville.

Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales: Born c.1422. The oldest son of Richard and Jacquetta and heir to the Earldom of Rivers. Jouster and scholar.

Elizabeth Woodville: Born c.1440. Daughter of Richard and Jacquetta. First married to Sir John Grey of Groby. After his death in battle, she married Edward IV. See above ‘York’.

Other Lords:

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick: Called ‘The Kingmaker’. Born 1428.

George Neville: Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England in the early years of Edward IV’s reign.

Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset: A leading Lancastrian. James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire: A Lancastrian Lord.

William, Lord Hastings: Born c.1431. A leading Yorkist supporter and Edward IV’s High Chamberlain.

John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester: A Yorkist. Constable of England and a leading scholar.

Lord John Howard: Edward IV’s Admiral.

Thomas Grey, Marquess Dorset: The elder son of Elizabeth Woodville and John Grey.

Ralph Grey: The younger son of Elizabeth and John Grey.

The Bastard Fauconberg: Otherwise known as Thomas Neville, Earl of Kent. A Yorkist.

Antoine: Known as ‘the Bastard of Burgundy’, or the ‘Great Bastard’, the illegitimate son of Philip III, Duke of Burgundy. A famous jouster.

The Gentry:

Sir Andrew Trollope: A prominent Lancastrian.

Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel: A disorderly knight and marvellous writer.

John Paston: A landowner and letter writer.

Sundry:

John Littlington: Benedictine Abbot of Crowland.

The anonymous Crowland Chronicler: One of a series of contributors to the Crowland Chronicle, compiled from 655 to 1486.

George Ripley: Augustinian canon and alchemist in the service of Edward IV.

Scoggin, Edward IV’s Fool: Alleged author of ‘a book of merie jests’.

William Caxton: Mercer, merchant and the man who introduced printing to England.

Louys de Bretaylles, a French knight: Owner of a manuscript, Les Dits Moraux des Philosophes.

The Coterels: A London criminal family.

List of Contents

Original Fiction

Dedication

List of Characters

Chapter One: Towton

Chapter Two: Crowland

Chapter Three: Gerfalcon

Chapter Four: Coronation

Chapter Five: Alnwick

Chapter Six: Corbenic

Chapter Seven: Wedding

Chapter Eight: Tiltyard

Chapter Nine: White Tower

Chapter Ten: Joust

Chapter Eleven: Manhunt

Chapter Twelve: Sea Battle

Chapter Thirteen: Exile

Chapter Fourteen: Barnet

Chapter Fifteen: Coterels

Chapter Sixteen: Compostella

Chapter Seventeen: Locus Amoenus

Chapter Eighteen: Ludlow

Copyright

Chapter One: Towton

Anthony Woodville, the Lord Scales, is one of those who sustain the King of England’s cause against that contumacious rebel, York. It is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, and the dawn before battle. Consequently Anthony kneels to receive the wafer that is dipped in the wine that is Christ’s blood. Mass is being celebrated in the largest of the pavilions which is that of the Duke of Somerset. The pavilion’s canvas billows inward before the fierce wind. ‘Hoc est corpus meum.’ The Duke’s chaplain, as he intones these words, is weeping for the multitude that must be slain today, but Anthony has no tears to shed, for he is young and knows that he will live forever and, though young, he is already an expert in despatching men to meet their Maker. He gazes on the sacramental chalice and ponders the paschal miracle. He and his fellows have feasted on the body of Christ. ‘Ita, missa est,’ declares the chaplain. Go, it is the dismissal.

His father Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers is in the arming tent before him. While their armour is being brought out from the barrels of sand, a squire plies them both with jugs of wine. Neither man has ever fought a battle sober. Once outside the tent, they stroke their horses farewell before the beasts are led away by the grooms. Though the grooms wished to know why King Henry was not with his army, but instead lingered in York, they received no direct reply from their masters, except Rivers telling them, ‘Somerset will know how to deal with the rebels. We have the numbers and the high ground and we serve the anointed King. Victory is certain and we shall give no quarter.’

Anthony nods and hefts his poleaxe. Besides the poleaxe, a shortsword hangs from his hip. The meadow where the fighting is to take place, close by the village of Towton, soon to be known as the Bloody Meadow, had only a few years earlier been cropland, but now, like so much of England, has become waste. All over the kingdom the waste can be seen coming down from the hills. The Lancastrian vanguard is commanded by the Earl of Northumberland and Sir Andrew Trollope. The Woodville father and son are part of the second line under the command of Somerset. They stand a little distance away from the Duke’s banner, which displays the arms of England quartered with those of France within a blue-and-white chequered border. Earl Rivers’s own banner shows a pitcher and magpie. From where the Woodvilles stand there is little to be seen and the snow which has just started to fall is blowing in their faces, but the word has been passed through the ranks that Edward of York’s archers are starting their advance across Towton meadow and they are heading towards the crest of the rise that is commanded by the Lancastrians. Perhaps the second line will see no fighting, for the Yorkists will find it hard to advance up the slope. In any case the Woodvilles are waiting until the last moment before lacing their helmets.

He waits and says nothing to his father. There is no word yet for what Anthony feels. He thirsts for violence, danger, quests and new and unheard of things. He hates the waiting under a leaden sky and then, after the fighting shall be done, he fears for a tomorrow that will be followed by many other days that will perfectly resemble that tomorrow. Daily life is more frightening to him than a sword thrust. If only armies could just rush against one another like stags in a forest. Alas, there has to be so much done first, in the way of mustering, travelling, feeding and arming. Life is too slow.

Then they hear of a commotion in the front line of men-at-arms. The blue lion rampant of the banner of Northumberland is seen moving forward. Somerset’s line is under orders to follow. The devil has set the weather against the Lancastrian archers, for their arrows have been falling short while the Yorkist arrows travel swiftly on the wind. There is no help for it but to descend from their point of vantage and engage with the enemy directly. On the meadow Anthony finds himself in a series of tight melées. For a while the beasts of England – wyverns, unicorns, boars, lions, griffins, yales and dragons – seem to be in combat over their heads, as the men-at-arms struggle to keep the banners aloft in the great press, but soon the banners are down. Though Anthony is able at times to use his poleaxe to steady himself, there is no possibility of wielding it in such a scrum. He and his men, as they press against the enemy, tread through the bloody slush, churn up the mud and trample on the bodies of friend and foe. By now, despite the snow-laden bitter wind, Anthony feels himself to be encased in a furnace and, unless he can find a space in which to unlace his helmet, he will surely pass out.

Providentially it seems, the press around him thins and he can unlace his helmet, but, having done so, he hears the screaming and wailing carried on the wind. Now that he can at last gaze over the field, he sees that all around him his fellows are in retreat. He lets his helmet fall and runs with them. A breathless squire shouts to him that Somerset and Wiltshire have found their horses and are already fled. Rivers is nowhere to be seen. Anthony follows the great mass of the Lancastrian foot who are hastening to the right down a steep slope which descends to the Cock River. It is difficult to keep his footing. The trap is closing in on them and the killing time has begun. Already many have perished trying to wade through the fast-flowing water, so many that Anthony runs on a bridge of bodies, but he is safe across the river and he exults.

Then it seems to him that he has been asleep. He feels well. The howling wind has died down and there is no shouting and screaming, but he hears a gentle voice intoning ‘Follow the light. Follow the light.’White-robed figures get him to rise and they usher him up through a brightly lit tunnel until he comes out before a castle in a forest. Snow is still falling and Anthony should find lodging for the night. He knocks at the gate of the castle. There is a long wait before the gate is opened and, then after his wounds have been inspected, he is allowed to enter, but when he seeks to proceed on into the great hall to make his plea for hospitality, he cannot. Though he is angry and insulted to find his way barred, even so he stands at the door, waiting and looking in, for he knows that something is about to happen. It is bright within, for the light of scores of torches is reflected off walls that have been painted silver and gold. At the far end he can see a figure with a face that has been painted white. He is propped up by cushions on a pallet. This man, who must be very sick, wears a golden crown made of paper set at a precarious angle.

Anthony has only just enough time to register this before the procession begins to cross the middle of the hall from right to left. It is led by a maiden of extraordinary beauty with a bloody cloth round her neck and she carries a broken sword. She is followed by a man who bears a lance whose tip is stained blood red, then six maidens bearing candelabras, and after them a priest who is bent under the weight of a thing which is covered in a mantle of red samite. The last in the procession is a huntsman who supports a white gerfalcon on his wrist. Not a word is uttered by the celebrants or by those who look on. The colours of everything that Anthony looks on are of extraordinary purity: the red robe of the ‘King’, the green dresses of the maidens, the purple cassock of the priest and the blue jerkin of the huntsman. It is like a child’s image of a sacred mystery. The calm that Anthony feels is more powerful than any passion that he has ever experienced.

Since the ceremony is now over, Anthony turns away, and, as he does so, he sees that Sir Andrew Trollope has been standing just behind him. He has sustained a nasty wound in the fighting, though it does not seem to trouble him any more. There are other knights beside Sir Andrew, but Anthony recognises none of them, nor their blazons. Though he is very glad to find a familiar face in this place of mystery, Andrew seems not so pleased.

‘Friend, I am sorry to see you. What do you do here?’ he asks.

Anthony, feeling at peace, does not know how to reply to this. What is he doing here?

Then Andrew points back to the crowned man lolling on the pallet.

‘He is pretending to be our King,’ he says. ‘See how he writhes as if he suffers from a terrible wound.’

Anthony is still at a loss for words. If he did speak, he senses that it would be like trying to talk underwater. Suddenly Andrew seems impatient to be away.

‘I am summoned to a feast,’ he says. ‘Friend, will you not join me? Come dine with me for fellowship’s sake.’ He smiles and tries to pluck at Anthony’s sleeve, but at his touch, Anthony, strangely terrified, faints.

When he comes round, he wakes to a body of pain. He lies with his eyes shut while he locates that pain, which is mostly above his left hip and at the back of his head. Stripped of his armour and padding, he is naked and cold. Then he opens his eyes and finds himself on the stone floor of a small dark chamber and a scrawny balding priest in a brown robe is bending over him and plucking at the lead figurine of a little man that is attached to a chain round Anthony’s neck. When the priest sees that Anthony’s eyes are open he draws back in surprise. Anthony gazes dispassionately at him. Then he asks, ‘Where am I?’

‘My lord, this is the Chapel of Aberford. You have been dead for two days, I think. This is the third. Some women, six women, carried your corpse here on a bier, asking that you might be buried beside the Chapel. They told me that yours was the corpse of Lord Scales, as could be seen from your surcoat and they left money for your burial. Indeed, you should have been buried already, only the ground was too hard for the gravediggers and besides they had plenty of work elsewhere. There is your shroud.’

The white cloth lies close beside Anthony. The priest, recollecting himself, throws the shroud over Anthony’s lower parts. Then he grows excited, ‘But you are a new Lazarus! How is it to die? What did you see on the other side? Is there a purgatory, or is there, as some men say, only heaven and hell? Are there animals in the afterlife? What shapes do men have after they are dead? Is it true that the saved can look down on the damned?…’

The priest has many more questions, but Anthony cuts him off, ‘I was never dead. I was in a castle in the middle of a forest. Which castles are near this place?’

‘There are many castles in this shire. Though I do not know of a castle in a forest, I never travel far from this holy place.’

The priest helps Anthony to a bed and for the next three days he rests. Though he has asked the priest about the whereabouts of Lord Rivers, Sir Andrew Trollope, King Henry and others, the piously narrow-minded priest knows nothing of the affairs of the great men of state. But he is well-versed in the Bible and returns again and again to the subject of Lazarus and how he had lain sick unto death in Bethany and when Jesus was told of this he delayed his coming to that town. He waited until Lazarus was dead and the worms of sin and decay held carnival in the poor man’s body. Only on the fourth day did Jesus enter Bethany and, though Lazarus’s body was already stinking, Jesus commanded him to come forth from the dead, saying, ‘Whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die’.

Anthony wants to know why Jesus waited four days before coming to the rescue of Lazarus. He is told that Jesus had determined on a miracle, a sacred wonder, so that believers might be encouraged and unbelievers damned. The priest continues, ‘For those who were there to witness it, it was a miracle; for those of us who come after, it is a story of a special sort which we call a parable.’

‘What is a parable?’

‘A parable is a story which refers to something other than what the story seems to be about. Every incident or adventure related in the Bible has four meanings…’

But Anthony sinks back into delirium without learning what the four levels of meaning might be. He thinks that he hears himself ask the priest, ‘Why just Lazarus? Why did Jesus not raise all the dead in Bethany? Or all the dead in the world since the beginning of creation?’ But, if there is an answer to this, he cannot hear it, and in any case what he was really asking was ‘Why me?’

On the fourth day Yorkist men-at-arms come to seize Anthony. They have heard rumours that a Lancastrian rebel lord was being sheltered in the chapel.

‘We will take you outside. You may say your prayers first, for you are a dead man, Lord Scales,’ the sergeant tells Anthony, before he begins to read out the bill of attainder:

‘At Towton, in the shire of York, accompanied with Frenchmen and Scots, the King’s enemies, the following lords falsely and traitorously against their faith and liegeance, there raised war against King Edward, their rightwise, true and natural liege lord, purposing there and then to have destroyed him, and deposed him of his royal estate, crown and dignity, and then and there to that intent, falsely and traitorously moved battle against his said estate, shedding therein blood of a great number of his subjects. In which battle it pleased almighty God to give unto him, of the mystery of his might and grace, the victory of his enemies and rebels, and to avoid the effect of their false and traitorous purpose. Whereupon the following traitors are condemned to death…’

At this point the sergeant pauses and he runs his finger and his eyes down the long list of those who are so condemned. Reading is difficult for him and he tries again. His lips move as he struggles with one name after another. Then, ‘You say you are the Lord Scales?’

‘I am Lord Scales.’

‘Your name is not here.’ The sergeant hesitates before going from the chapel to confer with some of his comrades who are mustered outside.

When the sergeant returns, he is smiling, ‘All is well. You were thought to be slain on the field, but, if by God’s mercy you were to be found alive, then our orders are to bring you before King Edward and your father, the High Constable of England, Lord Rivers.’

This makes no sense. As Anthony closes his eyes, he hears the priest exclaim, ‘Now you have bested Lazarus, for this is the second time that you have risen from the grave!’

A little later Anthony is helped onto a cart which will carry him to York. Though it is undignified, there is no help for it since he is very weak from his wounds. The roads are rutted and the way is painful. The wound in his side reopens and has to be dressed once more. Anthony is often feverish, but in his lucid intervals he learns of the extent of Edward’s victory and of the battle’s aftermath. It is thought that there were 200,000 men at the Battle of Palm Sunday and a great proportion of this number were slain. But were there ever so many men in England? Welles, Morley and John Neville were among those dead on the battlefield and, though gentlemen, they were pitched into mass graves with the commoners. Northumberland has died of his wounds in York. King Henry, Queen Margaret and the Duke of Somerset are fled to Scotland. Wiltshire is also fled. The cause of Lancaster is judged to be at an end. But Anthony’s escort has no detailed knowledge of Lord Rivers and his place in the new order.

As they travel, he asks the sergeant to let him see the bill of attainder. Not only is his name not on it, but neither is that of the military adviser to the Duke of Somerset, Sir Andrew Trollope. Anthony knew Andrew from of old. Andrew had started out as a man-at-arms and risen from the ranks under the command of Earl Rivers in the French war. Later he had fought at Wakefield and had been knighted after St Albans. If only Anthony can find him, he can learn the name of the castle.

He asks the sergeant if he has had word of where Sir Andrew is now and learns that Andrew was another of those slain on the battlefield. Andrew had continued to fight until both his arms were severed. Anthony should be sad, but instead he is angry with the spectral dream figure which had so deceived him and invited him to what he now knows would have been an insubstantial feast. Then, recollecting himself, he feels angry with himself at having been so easily deceived. Dreams are for people who have failed to find enough excitement in their waking lives. The mysterious procession he witnessed in the unnamed castle had no meaning.

Though the feverish spells diminish, he still has occasional visions in bright heraldic colours of arms rising from the water, of a passage up a mountain through a forest that is on fire, of a table laden with rotting food, and he awakes from these visions full of foreboding. The way is slow, but Anthony is not impatient to reach his destination, for he dreads seeing his father once again. This should be a joyous occasion, but he knows that it will be no such thing and he tries to rehearse the argument that they must have.

Once in York, he is helped out of the cart. A crutch has been found for him and he is supported into the cathedral close where he finds his father sitting under a blossoming hawthorn tree. His father rises and they embrace. His father looks hard at him and runs his hand over Anthony’s face and torso as if to reassure himself that this is his son and he is still alive. Then his father sinks down back to the ground and the recriminations begin.

‘I lost sight of you on the field,’ says Anthony. He cannot stop himself. ‘Where did you go? Had you already gone to sell your sword to the Duke of York?’

His father slumps back down, resumes his resting place against the tree and gestures that Anthony should join him on the ground, but he will not and instead, though it is painful for him to be propping himself upright, stands looking down on his father.

‘The sun of York has brought us better weather. You must learn to call Edward King… And it was not like that,’ says his father. ‘Seeing that Northumberland was in trouble, I went to his assistance, or tried to, but was unable to cut my way through to his banner and when I realised that I could not, I then saw that all around me were retreating and I did what they did, but I was captured before I could reach the horse park. After such a battle I knew that the cause of Lancaster was forever lost, so, when I was brought before Edward, I submitted to him and begged for pardon and that great prince showed me mercy and even favour and so it is that I remain High Constable of England. If I have sold my sword, I have bought your head with it, Anthony. Edward has spared your life also and you may find preferment with him. I thought that I had already lost you. To lose –’

But Anthony is impatient, ‘Then I should be forsworn as you are forsworn. Forsworn and damned.’

‘You should smile and thank your father for your life. Now tell me how you think you are forsworn.’

By now they were shouting at one another. Attracted perhaps by the shouting, a man comes and stands close enough to listen to the argument. He wears a jerkin crudely stitched together from sackcloth and his legs are sheathed in scuffed brown leather. His narrow bony face is clouded with anxiety and he makes a supplicatory gesture, as if he is about to ask Anthony and his father to calm down, or at least lower their voices. But perhaps he is merely about to beg for money. They decide to ignore him.

‘It is not what I think, but what I know. We both knelt and swore before God fealty to King Henry. It is a fearful thing to break an oath given before God.’

But his father has anticipated this.

‘Yes, it is so,’ he agrees. ‘An oath before God indeed! Then how must it be with King Henry who on the day of his coronation swore before God’s power to cause Law and Justice in Mercy to be executed in all his judgements and to keep peace in the kingdom? This he has not done.

Do you remember how young Rutland was slaughtered? And do you remember how the Earl of Devonshire’s men surrounded the house of the lawyer, Nicholas Radford and entreated him to come down from his chamber, promising him that he should endure no bodily harm. So Radford descended. His rooms were looted and he was told that he must go to talk with the Duke and Radford said that he would ride there straightaway, whereupon he was told that all his horses were taken away. Then Radford said to the Duke’s son, who was their leader, “Sir, your men have robbed my chamber, and they have my horses that I may not ride with you to my Lord your father. Wherefore I pray you let me ride, for I am old and cannot walk.” But he was told that he must walk and when he was just a slingshot from his house, nine men fell upon the old man and cut his throat…’

Now the man in sackcloth butts in, ‘A certain gentleman was getting drunk in a tavern and his companions decided to play a prank upon him. So one of them slipped out and turned the saddle on his horse the other way about. Then, when they all met in the tavern the following evening they asked him how he had got home the previous night. ‘You do well to ask,’ he replied. ‘When I got out I found that some evil-minded person had cut my horse’s head off and I had to guide the horse home with my finger stuck up its windpipe… Ah hah hah hah! You must laugh, yet, gentle sirs, you both look so grim and glum.’

He pauses to pull an exaggeratedly gloomy face before continuing, ‘Scoggin is the name! It is sure that all that befell Radford was long ago and old Scoggin thinks that now it is the Maytime, it is time for us all to be jolly.’

Earl Rivers waves his hand as if he would swat a fly.

‘Go away. We are busy and have no time for beggars.’

‘But, my lord, forgive Scoggin, for you are mistaken. Scoggin is no beggar. He is here to entertain you with a hundred merry jests and capers. He does not beg for money, for everyone knows that a fool and his money are easily parted. Instead he seeks for livery and maintenance, for he presents himself here to be your household fool. Ta ra!’

Rivers ignores Scoggin and continues, ‘Was Radford’s end not pitiful? Where then was the King’s justice? And think on how the Duke of Suffolk was betrayed on his way to Calais and his head cut off with half a dozen strokes from a rusty sword and that head left on the sand at Dover. How many crimes and atrocities must I list? Under Henry, misgovernance, unrest, inward war and trouble, foolish counsels, shedding and effusion of innocent blood, abuse of laws, partiality, riot, extortion, murder, rape and vicious living have been the guiders and leaders of the noble realm of England. Moreover, he has lost us our kingdom in France. A King cannot seat himself on a throne and think to himself “Now that I am King, I can do whatever I want”, for a coronation is in truth a contract that is binding on both parties.’

Scoggin cannot contain himself, ‘Once a King always a King: once a knight is enough! Ah ha ha ha!’

He is ignored. Rivers continues, ‘Henry owed his subjects good lordship and this he has failed to provide. Moreover, he has broken the Act of Accord that was ratified by the lords and parliament last year. According to that Act, Edward’s father Richard and Edward after him were declared to be Henry’s heirs and successors to the crown when Henry should die or abdicate. Now, Henry broke his oath and did not conform to the Act of Accord and indeed he had Richard of York slain and his severed head wearing a paper crown, impaled on the Micklegate Bar at York. So no oaths taken to such a perjured King can be binding.’

‘Perjured or not, Henry is still King. He has not died or abdicated.’

‘Oh, but he has abdicated. He has abandoned his kingdom, for by his flight to the Scots, who are England’s enemies,Henry must be deemed to have abdicated his rule.’

Before Anthony can interrupt, his father hurries on, ‘The rule of the house of Lancaster was from the first based on violence not blood-right. All the line of Lancaster must be deemed usurpers, as more than half a century ago, Henry IV rose against King Richard II and had him murdered. When King Richard died, his heir should have been Edmund Mortimer, the grandson of the second son of Edward III and since then it is from the line of Mortimer that York, his cousin, derives his true right to the throne. In this world a man who is ignorant of genealogy is lost. Genealogy and heraldry are the only two sciences worth knowing.’

‘This is wise. Scoggin wishes that he was so clever,’ says the would-be jester, stroking his chin. Then he continues, ‘Sirs, though I am nobody who comes from nowhere, yet through your good lordship I can become somebody. Though I have no past, you can give me a future.’ And to Anthony, he says, ‘You have a most pretty face. Surely it betokens kindness?’

Richard had been speaking urgently, for he knows that he is speaking for the life of his son. But now he pauses, distracted by Scoggin’s interruption and momentarily at a loss for further arguments.

Then Anthony rushes in, ‘It is a great shame to depose such a holy man, for Henry is a sainted King whose prayers have sustained and protected the kingdom.’

‘Ha ha!’

Richard’s laugh is mirthless. Anthony realises that he has never heard his father laugh at anything humorous. After the rhetorical laugh, Richard continues, ‘So we have known government by a sainted innocent, have we? How many miracles has our saint performed? The truth is that Henry is capricious, cruel, cowardly and mad. Because of Henry Bolingbroke’s usurpation, God has made the kingdom desolate and cursed his grandson with madness, just as he cursed Nebuchadnezzar, who was “made to eat grass as oxen” and “his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws”. As for sainted Henry, his wits are gone and he can scarcely remember how to walk. He drools and, when he speaks, he speaks like a child…’

The image of a man propped up on a pallet and wearing a crown awry rose up in Anthony’s mind. His father continued in full spate, ‘Whereas Edward… Edward is the man who God has made King. At six feet and three inches, he is every inch a King, vigorous, courageous, resolute and generous. Edward does not skulk in a chapel, but he leads in battle.’

Now Scoggin has the impertinence to shake his finger in Earl Rivers’s face.

‘Edward is up and Henry is down. That is the way of the wheel of fortune, for it turns and turns. Watch and let Scoggin’s shiny head be Edward and Scoggin’s dirty feet be Henry.’

Then the grotesque creature begins a series of cartwheels that are designed to show that he who is on top shall one day be down and he who is beneath shall one day be above. Then he pauses to catch his breath before continuing, ‘It is the same with Scoggin. You see how poorly he is apparelled. He does not have a cap and bells, nor his garb of motley, nor his pig’s bladder. All the wherewithal of foolery are lacking to him, but one day it shall be different, his feet shall be above his head and he shall be acclaimed the King of Buffoons and it shall be Scoggin who presides over the Council of Fools.’

And the fool does a few more cartwheels to bring home his point.

But his father turns away and addresses Anthony, ‘Those who are wise will follow the man who is born to lead. There is no reward for stupidity, unless it be the gallows or the headsman’s block. Are you hearing me, Anthony? Could you not stop shifting about for a single moment?’

Now Scoggin, who brightens at the word ‘stupidity’, jumps in with a new interruption, ‘Scoggin was not always thus. He has spent seven years as a hermit telling his beads and hoping for visions, at the end of which he had a vision of an angel who spoke to him, saying, “God has listened to your prayers and is minded to reward you for your piety. He offers you a choice between beauty and stupidity. Which will you have?” ’

But Rivers has no interest in what might have been Scoggin’s choice, ‘Be off with you or I shall have you seized and whipped.’

‘Scoggin shall go. But over the years Scoggin has noticed that those he thinks ill of always come to a bad end. We will meet again in different circumstances and up shall be down and down shall be up.’ And with that prophecy the would-be fool starts to shuffle off. But suddenly he turns and points a finger at Anthony and says, ‘No man knows for sure whether he serves God or the Devil!’

Anthony wonders if this observation can possibly have been meant as a joke, as he watches Scoggin shuffle away.

Anthony who has come back from the dead has seen no cause for laughter. He watches the scrounging maledictory beggar depart before resuming the argument.

‘I have heard you, but I am thinking that only three weeks ago you were happy enough to follow the man that you now denounce as a perjured imbecile. You were preaching no quarter to those who have now become your fellows. Have you forgotten that the Yorkists have slaughtered our friends? You are become the servant of those who killed Northumberland, Welles and Trollope, who were our companions. All that you have said is very clever, but that does not mean that you are right. If you were so minded, you could easily make a better case for Henry and a worse one for Edward – and, if the tide of war turns again, perhaps you will. Of course, you are cleverer than me and you will always be able to batter me down with your words, but you cannot make me believe you.’

‘Will you not sit down? My neck hurts from gazing up at you. This century had barely started when I was born and I am now an old man. I am too old to face exile in France or, worse, seek refuge in the desolate wilds of Scotland. As a youth I served in France with the Duke of Suffolk and with Richard of York. They have both lost their heads, but I am still here, sitting in the sun and ready and able to serve the kingdom. If you will not pay homage to the new King, you too will be beheaded and I will be forced to watch. No man should have to witness the death of his child. Not only that, but if you should run off to Lancaster, then I will be incriminated and my head will be cut off. It is true that I am cleverer than you and it is because of this and because I am your father and because you must be sensible of the obedience that a son owes his father that you will obey me and make your peace with Edward.’

So it is that Anthony drops to the ground and joins his father under the hawthorn.

‘You are young and it will soon be summer,’ says his father comfortably. ‘Now we must reunite you with your wife.’

Chapter Two: Crowland

Homage has been paid to King Edward and Anthony has bound himself to attend the coronation that will soon be held in London. Now he rides out of York heading south to Doncaster and from there to Lincoln and on into Norfolk. The estates of the Barony of Scales are scattered round Bishop’s Lynn. The county and the Scales estates within the county have become rich from the wool trade. A woman’s beauty can receive an extra sheen from money and so it was with Elizabeth de Scales, sole daughter and heiress of Thomas Lord Scales, widow of Henry Bourchier, and now Anthony’s wife. When Anthony had set out from the Manor of Middleton on his way to muster with the Duke of Somerset before the great battle, Elizabeth, or Beth rather, had still been dressing in black in deep mourning for Bourchier and she had denied Anthony her bed.

‘It is too soon,’ she had said. ‘I need to grieve and pray that his soul is at peace.’

Heavy spring showers make the journey south difficult as well as painful. Happily his horse, a courser he has named Black Saladin, is sure-footed. Anthony travels through a ravaged land. Everywhere he notes abandoned farmsteads, cold harbours and forests that encroach again on land that had been theirs a century or more ago. He knows that there had once been more people in England. But then came the plagues and these were followed by the blood-letting at the battles of St Albans, then Blore Heath, Ludford, Northampton, Wakefield, Mortimer’s Cross and Palm Sunday. When will this curse be lifted from the kingdom? Perhaps those battles are the prelude to the End of the World.

It is possible that the hurling times are over and that Anthony will see no more battles in his lifetime. But his father has been shaped by and made cynical by past disasters. Above all, his father broods obsessively over his humiliation at Calais earlier in this year. Earl Rivers had been sent by Henry’s Council to Sandwich where he was to organise the mustering of a fleet to assist the Duke of Somerset against the rebels in Calais who were commanded by Warwick and Edward of March, the son and heir of York. But before much of Earl Rivers’ work was done, a Yorkist captain launched a surprise attack on Sandwich and not only sank some of the Lancastrian ships but captured Earl Rivers and Anthony and carried them off to Calais. There they were brought before Edward of March and the Earl of Warwick. When his father started to protest, Warwick had shouted him down and told him that he was ‘the son of a squire and so not fit to talk to lords who were of the King’s blood’ and he added that Rivers was ‘a knave who was not born of a noble lineage, but who had seduced his way to marrying into it’. Anthony continued to watch as Warwick berated his father as if he were a naughty schoolboy. Though the Woodvilles were released soon enough after this, since at that time Warwick and York still pretended loyalty to King Henry, Warwick’s abuse continued to fester in River’s mind.

Now that both Warwick and his father serve King Edward and sit in his Privy Council, Anthony wonders how things will turn out. He knows that his father thirsts for revenge and has a penchant for plots with long fuses. Anthony thinks that, if Warwick had been clever, he should have killed them both while he had the chance. Yet Anthony cannot die. And he will not allow himself to become an accomplice in his father’s intrigues. Nor will he pay attention to his mother, Jacquetta’s relaying of fairy whisperings. He thinks that he will shape his own story far away from the court.

He stops and rests at monasteries when he can. The talk at mealtimes is customarily about holy matters. The Priory of Holbeach is no more than a day’s journey from Norfolk. There he has to attend a sermon in which the Prior dwells particularly on the virtue of chastity.

‘Samson was undone by his lust for Delilah. Lancelot would have been judged a perfect knight had it not been for his adultery with Guinevere, after which his sin sent him running mad in the forest. Lust makes fools of all men. Love is a kind of madness that chains men to women. Bright eyes, golden hair and young flesh give enchantment, yet all end up in the grave as food for worms. It is written in Proverbs: “For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.” May God never forgive him who wishes to honour and serve these passionate and impassioned whores who are worse than I can tell you. And consider these words from Corinthians: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”

The following day as Anthony rides on, he broods on the Prior’s words, yet though he should meditate on the decay of mortal flesh and the steps that lead to hell, the image of Lady Scales rises up before him and he recalls her high-arched eyebrows, her arrogant face and the fleshy curves encased in a gleaming black dress – a promise not of Hell but of Paradise. As he considers her assumed piety and the difficulties she has made, his suspicions return. She is not really in mourning for her late husband, he thinks. The truth is that she has been lusting after handsome James Butler, the Earl of Wiltshire and ‘the fairest knight of this land’. When they were at Eltham he has watched how Beth gazed at Butler who was demonstrating some fancy piece of swordplay. Half the noblewomen in England, including Anthony’s own sister, have been dreaming of bedding him. Butler was slim and he had long, dark curly hair, piercing eyes and a strong chin. Though he was dubbed ‘the fairest knight in all the land’, he has also been called the ‘flying earl’ and men, most of them, liked him little and said of him that he fought ‘mainly with his heels’, since he had fled from the Battle of St Albans disguised as a monk, and he then had run away from Mortimer’s Cross before the battle had even begun, dressed this time as a serving man. Still it was enviable to have been blessed with such looks.

By the time Anthony reaches Norfolk, he has resolved to put an end to his wife’s playing at chaste mourning and to take her by storm, even if he should find her kneeling in the chapel where she pretends to pray for her dead husband. He spurs Black Saladin on.

It is night by the time he arrives at the Manor of Middleton. Once there, he brushes the servants aside and he runs up the stairs as urgently as if he were scaling a fortress and he flings open the door of the bedroom. The four-poster bed is surrounded by candles. By their light he can see that she is seated upright and terrified and beside her, also seated upright, is James Butler, who grins.

Anthony turns away shuddering. He had not guessed that there could be such horror in the world… for now he has seen his wife in bed with a dead man. At Towton, James Butler, ‘the flying earl’, had fled the field, but this time not fast enough and Yorkist horsemen caught up with him at Cockermouth and brought him to Newcastle, where, at the King’s command, he was beheaded. The earl’s head was then sent south and presently, so Anthony had heard, the head is displayed impaled on the gate of London Bridge. Though the thing he had seen in Beth’s bed still had its head on its shoulders, James Butler, if it was he and not some simulacrum, could no longer be described as ‘the fairest in the land’, for his face was hideously gashed about and plastered with blood.

Anthony hurls himself downstairs and runs out to his courser and leaps into the saddle. His wife, barefoot and in her shift, comes running after him. She is crying out to him to take her with him, but he will not face her and he digs his spurs into Black Saladin’s flanks and rides at a wallop, as if his wife were the spectre that was pursuing him. A little before dawn, he arrives at Crowland Abbey. The Abbey is a kind of closely guarded castle; the monks are its garrison against the wickedness of the world outside, and perhaps he should be safe here from the monstrous thing that he has seen in Elizabeth’s bed. This Benedictine Abbey is particularly well-provisioned against any siege by demons, and indeed its monks pray and meditate in great comfort. Anthony is found lodgings in the most luxurious of the guest rooms in the Abbey’s hostelry.

Having slept for many hours, towards the end of the day he asks to make confession. His confessor advises him to tell the Abbot about the apparitions.

‘He will love hearing of this.’

As they make their way from the vespers service to the refectory for dinner Anthony starts to talk about his visions of dead men. Abbot John Littlington smiles broadly, but puts a finger to his lips. They dine without speaking on roast bream and salted Cambridge eels with barley bread and Gascon wine. As they eat, a young monk standing at a lectern in front of the table reads the chapter in the life of St Guthlac in which the saint’s participation in the Wild Hunt is described. After dinner the Abbot and some of the senior monks, including the Prior, the guest-master, the almoner, the librarian, the infirmarian, the cellarer and the Chronicler, process to the chapterhouse. Its hall is hung with tapestries, one of which shows the three dead and the three living Kings, a second the siege of Jerusalem and a third the instruments of the Passion. The monks are eager to hear from Anthony of the great battle in the north and the politics arising from the gathering of the Yorkist lords around Edward, but Anthony has little to say on these matters. Instead he hurries on to tell them how he has encountered two men who are dead but yet seemed as if they were alive.

‘Now reverend sirs,’ Anthony asks, ‘Am I mad or am I cursed?’

Though he hopes that they will advise him on how to avoid any future visitations of the dead, in this he is disappointed.

The Abbot is a big man, vigorous in his movements and opinions. He is also a little drunk and he boisterously thumps the table so hard that it shakes.

‘Certainly not mad!’ he insists. ‘The world is full of wonders and is not as the commonalty conceive of it. Did you hear what happened at Coggeshall only a few years ago? All the parishioners of Coggeshall witnessed it, for they were coming out from Sunday service. They saw before them an anchor attached to a rope and, though the ship was above and hidden in the clouds, they could hear the sailors trying to haul the rope up, but to no avail. At length one of the sailors came down the rope, hand under hand, whereupon he was seized by the church-goers who wanted to know what he did. Alas, he could not breathe in the moisture of our denser air and expired almost immediately.’

Anthony senses that the other monks had heard it all before. The infirmarian does not trouble to conceal his disdain.

The Abbot claps his hands.

‘God has created marvellous things for us to marvel at! Rejoice and be astonished! Who has not heard of the green men and women who live in caves and under the ferns and who cannot speak English? And what do you say about the rain of frogs and toads that fell upon Tilbury only last year? Wise men know that one thing shades into another and there are no hard frontiers between the living and the dead, the animal and the vegetable, those who dwell in the sky and those who dwell on earth, for it is all a perfect continuum. Consider the wondrous vegetable lamb of Tartary, which grows everywhere in the meadowlands inhabited by the Mongols. The lamb, which has its roots in the earth, feeds on the grass around it and then when it had eaten all the grass which the lamb’s stem allows it to reach it starves to death. But its seeds give birth to other vegetable lambs. Our earth has trapdoors that are hidden and strange things go in and out of them. Why only last week here in Crowland we all saw a troupe of naked men and women standing on the branches of a tree less than a bowshot from the entrance to the Abbey! As we read in the Dialogus Miraculorum of Caesarius of Heisterbach, God sends us miracles as signposts to guide us to the greatest Miracle which is Himself.’

The Abbot spreads out his hands as if inviting Anthony to come to the God of wonders, and Anthony replies, ‘These are marvels indeed. But I have seen Sir Andrew Trollope and the Earl of Wiltshire, who were men I was familiar with but who are now dead. How can this be?’

But the Abbot is at home in such matters and he replies, ‘It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally (I know not by what agency) from their graves, and should wander about to the terror and destruction of the living, and again return to the tomb, which of its own accord spontaneously opened to receive them. Did not frequent examples occur in our own times which suffice to establish this fact, the truth of which there is abundant testimony?’

The Abbot’s voice drops as he continues, ‘Dead men walking are common enough and I could tell you many tales about them. I will tell you just one. It is this. An evil man on the run from the law fled from York and settled in a distant village and married there. But he soon became suspicious of his wife and so he hid in the rafters of their bedroom from where he was able to observe her infidelity. But in so doing he was careless and fell to the floor and his fall proved mortal for he died of it a few days later. The man received a Christian burial even though he, being the handiwork of Satan, did not deserve it and afterwards he was not suffered to remain in his grave but was pursued by a pack of dogs with horrible barkings, so that the people of the village were compelled to bolt their doors from sunset to sunrise for fear of encountering this horrible monster. Those who did stray from their homes were invariably killed.’

‘In the end the villagers took spades to the man’s grave and were surprised how little earth they had to clear before they found the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence and the face turgid and thick with blood and the monster’s shroud mostly ripped to pieces. Anger gave courage to the young men beside the grave and they hacked at the corpse with the edges of their spades, whereupon so much blood poured out from it that they might have been attacking a sack full of leeches that had fed on many persons. Then, when they dragged the body to its pyre, they found that it would not burn until they had cut its heart out and then finally it did burn. Events such as these are warnings, calling us to a virtuous life. My lord, what you have seen is not so very unusual or important. Still I admit that I do envy you for your encounter with the creatures of the afterlife.’

His tale concluded the Abbot asked the Chronicler of Crowland to conduct Anthony to the scriptorium so that Anthony might dictate what he had seen at the Battle of Palm Sunday, as well as give an account of his ghostly visitations. (The Abbot was particularly interested and pleased to hear how the dead are conducted up along a tunnel of light to be greeted by men in white robes.)

Alone with the Chronicler Anthony asks, ‘Am I mad or is the Abbot mad?’

‘Our Abbot is a great man,’ says the Chronicler sulkily before he sets to writing. He dutifully and briefly records what Anthony is prepared to tell him about the ghosts. But really he is more interested in what Anthony can tell him about his meetings with King Henry and King Edward, as well as the Battle of Palm Sunday.

‘Do I have it right?’ the Chronicler wants to know. ‘I have never been in a fight.’ He sounded wistful. Anthony tries to describe the battle, but in truth, so long as his visor was down, he had seen so little of the fighting – just the confusion and the crowds of armoured men pressing against one another. The Chronicler showed him what he had written already: ‘The blood of the slain mixed with the snow, which covered the land at that time, and when the snow melted it flowed into furrows and ditches over an area of two or three miles in a most gruesome fashion’. Yes, that was how it had been and was it not strange that those carefully inked words should conjure it up so exactly? Anthony is impressed.

The Chronicler persists in questioning him about politics and warfare. Finally he puts his pen down and sighs.

‘You and your peers make history whereas I merely record it. The names of Scales and Rivers are already famous and talked about, whereas my own name will be forgotten within a generation. Even now there are few enough people who know my name.’

(This must be true. Even though Anthony had been properly introduced to the Chronicler, he has already forgotten his name.)

Anthony turns over a few of the earlier pages of the chronicle. Most of it is the stuff of parish talk and a record of the remarkably few things that had happened to the Abbey and, above all, repeated praise of the deeds and wisdom of Abbot John Littlington. Indeed, the Abbot features more prominently in the chronicle than do King Henry or the Duke of York. Apart from Anthony’s deposition, the most recent entry deals with the Abbot’s inspection of a two-headed calf in a nearby village.

At this point the Abbot comes staggering in, ‘My lord, it will soon be compline. Will you walk with me?’

As they walk towards the abbey church the Abbot turns to Anthony, ‘You say that you saw the Earl of Wiltshire, though dead, in the bed that you customarily share with your wife?’

Anthony nods and then the Abbot continues, ‘According to St Augustine, “Passionate love for one’s own wife is adultery.” If you have had a vision of the Earl of Wiltshire in such a place, then it was to put a curb on your own lust for your wife. But what a wonder! I wish that I had been there to see it.’

Anthony is thankful that this was not the case. The Abbot has been no help at all. A little later Anthony is listening to the evil-averting prayer of compline.

‘Scuto circumdabit te veritas ejus; non timebis a timore nocturno, a sagitta volante in die, a negotio perambulente in tenebris ab incursu et daemonio meridiano.’

‘His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day. Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.’

Though there are no apparitions in the night, Anthony’s sleep is fitful at best. First, he makes plans to escape the tedium of England and the wearisome factions that struggle for power at the English court. He wants to see the vegetable lamb of Tartary with his own eyes. He conjures up his future journey to distant lands where there are underground cities and smoking lakes and where men in conical hats walk amidst mountains built of bricks, while long-snouted creatures with teeth struggle out of the swamps. There is nothing for him in England, where everything is so old and familiar: old roads, old customs, old castles, old lineages, old feuds, old laws, old churches, old books and an old religion. Living in England is like camping in a graveyard.