The Brothers of Gwynedd (96 page)

  I said that we were, that if he willed we could linger here a day, and he and I could ride there. If he so willed, alone. His face was fixed and bright, still as a royal head upon a gold coin, and even so coloured, a tissue of fine drawn lines in gilt and umber. Those who thought him moderate and tempered and equable, a man wellset in the cautious craft of state, did not know him as I knew him. He and I were born in the same night, under the same stars, his mother was my mother's patron and mistress, there was no dividing us. And I knew him possessed and inspired, a soul like the flame of a candle on an altar, kindled and unquenchable in dedication to the cause of Wales. Yet in pursuit of that passion he had encountered one perhaps greater than himself, burning with a grander vision, and for a time those two flames had been one. If I forgot nothing, how could I conceive that he should forget?

  "No," said Llewelyn after a long thought, and in a voice so low I strained to hear. "Not here! Kenilworth is not the place."

In London we were very honourably lodged, the princes with their immediate households in King Henry's own palace of Westminster, some close officers, of whom I was one, in the guest-halls of the collegiate church of St. Peter, the object of our pilgrimage, while the knights of the escort were sent on to that Tower of which I had so many old memories. Thus Cristin, being tirewoman to Elizabeth, remained in the royal island of Westminster close to me, while Godred was removed to the Tower, and both she and I could breathe freely and look each other in the eyes when we met with gladness and calm, untainted by the poison of his misery and malice; which neither of us knew how to cure. And by that blessedness, in part, I remember that great celebration of St. Edward's day.

  That is a wonder, that city of Westminster, in extent so small, in beauties so great, so teeming then with all the nobility of the land, for there was no earl nor baron nor cleric who did not wish to be present at the translation of the saint. In shape almost square, it is rimmed with water on every side, for on the east lies the Thames with all its ships and barges, while from the west flows in the little river Tyburn, to fill the long ditches that close in the royal enclave from north and south. And all this moated town is filled with the many and splendid buildings of palace and church, colleges and dortoirs and hospices and chapels, the gardens and orchards and cloisters of the monks, the stables and boat-houses and offices of the king, and everything needful to life, bakehouse and farm and fisheries, lodgings for good poor men, alms-houses and mews and kitchens. I marvelled at the great press of guests this city could receive and accommodate, and yet at this time it was full to overflowing, and so glowing with ardour and excitement, so full of voices and music, colour and movement, that the dullest heart could not but be stirred.

  And there in the midst of this island city rises the long, lofty roof of the great church, visible from every part, from every part commanding and drawing the eye. The marvel within we were not to see until the great day of the translation and the first mass, but the marvel without was enough to hold us at gaze all the days we spent there in waiting. Such noble, springing tracery in stone, such grace of windows and portals, I had never seen. The monks, before their coffers ran dry, had themselves built the Lady Chapel they desired at the eastern end of the old church, and the form of this was fine, but time and the king's passion for his act of piety had outrun it far, and the body of the church which he had now completed, transepts and apse and choir, soared above incomparably tall and fair.

  King Henry received Llewelyn and David in audience as soon as we came there, but I did not see him close until the day of the feast, only now and again running about his creation and vanishing again into his palace in transports of excited happiness, his master-mason and clerks and familiars hard on his heels like a swarm of bees. He was then sixty-two years old, and had lived through a long and war-torn reign that had destroyed many a stronger vessel, and though he had ridden out all the tempests he bore the signs upon him. Slender and graceful always, he was now very frail in appearance, his face worn and transparent, his fair, well-tended hair and beard blanched to an ivory-grey, and doubtless he was very weary, but the rapture of his achievement filled him with force and energy. If he had laboured on his kingdom with such devoted concentration of mind he would surely have been the best of kings. But at least, if his talents had not gone into statecraft, they had spent themselves on something lasting, lovely and worthy in the end, and I give him the credit due.

  It had been the king's intention that he and his queen should wear their crowns of state upon the saint's feast, and that all things should be ordained in the same fashion as at a coronation, which meant that the customary writs had been sent out to all those who had special ceremonial rights and duties, and for some weeks they had been making great preparations for the occasion. But on the vigil of the feast King Henry made belated proclamation in Westminster Hall that he had had better thoughts in the matter, and deemed it presumptuous to assume the crown a second time, and especially felt it his part rather to be humble and joyful in his service to Saint Edward, than proud in his own estate. So the formal ceremonies were remitted, though all who cared to come to the festival might do so, and after the translation and the mass might remain to share in the banquet.

  "That's but half the story," said Llewelyn, when I attended him in the evening to make preparation for next day. "It seems he's still beset with civil wars, though minor ones now. The citizens of London had laid out lavishly on plate and robes, since they owe service in the butlery on such state festivals, when the crowns are worn. But then the men of Winchester also laid claim to the butlery. It's a costly business, and no doubt either city would have resisted if it had been exacted from them as a duty, but neither was willing to relinquish it as an honour. There would have been quarrels, at the least, maybe a little blood-letting. He thought wiser to bow out of his crown gracefully and avoid the contention."

  It was too much, I said, to suppose that anything could ever go altogether smoothly and decorously with King Henry. Nothing he touched ever came finally to ruin, but always he walked creaking ice that cracked behind him, and came to land again safely by something a little short of a miracle.

  "Ah, he'll ride this little storm," said Llewelyn, "at no more cost than the meat and wine he provides them. But he has graver matters on his mind, too, when the light of his shrine is not too brilliant to let him see them. Gloucester has not come to the festival. And tomorrow being the great day, clearly he does not intend to come."

  From our view it was no bad thing that Gilbert de Clare should put himself in ill odour with both king and prince. All the more would they be disposed to listen, in the matter of the rape of Senghenydd and the building of Caerphilly, to the protagonist who did come at the king's invitation, and was prepared, as clearly Gilbert was not, to meet his opponent and consider sensible arbitration. By his intransigence and disobedience we could not fail to gain credence.

  "He is mad," said David, who was with us that evening, and throughout showed a front of unity with his brother, though during the past days he had been much in the Lord Edward's company. "If he does not come he turns the king into an enemy for the sake of his favourite saint, let alone the matter of the crusade. And Edward is already bitterly angry with him for trying to slide out of his obligations. He took the oath of his own free will, like the rest, and Edward will hold him to it. Gloucester's party should provide one of the strongest companies. Edward is absolute that he cannot fulfill his undertakings to King Louis and to God properly if Gloucester breaks his oath. If he does not come in time for tomorrow, the king will send for him, and he had better pay heed. But my guess is, he'll come. At the last moment, with the worst grace, and insolently, but he'll come."

  But the morrow came, and the whole court and its guests rose with the dawn to make ready, but Gilbert de Clare did not come. Nor, in the end, was this the only vexation King Henry had to contend with on the supreme day of his life, for not only did the citizens of London stand so rigidly on their dignity as to withdraw after the great mass ended, and refuse the feast, while the men of Winchester crowed over them and stayed to eat and drink their fill, but there was also a grander and more bitter contention, which ended with London laid under an interdict for a time, though for all I could see it made little difference to life in the city, and no one fretted overmuch. The trouble arose out of an old rivalry between the two archbishops, for he of York had always insisted that he had the right to have his cross carried before him in the province of Canterbury as at home, and his brother of Canterbury had always resisted it. Now the archbishop of Canterbury at this time, the queen's uncle Boniface of Savoy, was very old, and too frail to be present at the great ceremony, and so his brother of York, Walter Giffard, had his way at the translation, and had his cross paraded before him, to the great offence of all his fellow-bishops, so that they made no move, when the time came, to join him in the procession round the new church, but sat implacably in the stalls of the monks, and let him cense the shrine alone. And old Boniface, when he heard of it, was so resentful that he placed London under interdict, and a month later he said his last mass in England at the coast, before sailing home to his native Savoy, where he died a year afterwards.

  But as for the great concourse of worshippers that thronged into the church that

day, I think these annoyances fell away from them unnoticed, as motes of dust vanish in a great brightness, or if they are seen at all, show like flying jewels. For truly that was a wonder. I think in this world there could be no building more glorious. The work the king had done—and rightly he can so claim, for though he had the finest masons and jewellers and metal-workers to labour for him, yet he himself had firm views on what he would have, and set it out in detail—comprised the eastern end of the nave, where his own royal chair was, the choir and the north and south transepts, the presbytery and the chapels and ambulatory of the apse, and beyond these to the east a short ambulatory leading to the Lady Chapel, which the monks had built some years before. And behind the high altar, encircled by the chapels, the new shrine of the saint was raised aloft.

  Such was the extent of the work. But what can be said of the form, of the great soaring columns of marble that led our eyes upwards as we entered, so high we had to crane backwards to look up into the gilded ribs and bosses of the vault, of the carven shields, the diapered wall-spaces, the filigree windows, the traceries of screen and arcade, of the glorious colours of painted angels and sacred medallions, the grisaille glass studded with armorial shields. The sun shining through them filled all the vault with singing sparks of emerald and ruby and gold.

  In this enclosure of splendour, to the chanting of the monks of St. Peter and in the presence of all who could crowd anywhere within the walls, the relics of Saint Edward the Confessor were reverently taken in their casket from the old shrine, swathed with rich draperies, and carried on the shoulders of King Henry, his brother Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans, the king's sons, the Lord Edward and Edmund of Lancaster, and as many more of the great nobles as could get a hand to the bier, to the new, raised shrine aloft behind the altar. Edward's great height so threw things out of balance that he was forced to let the coffin rest in his arm rather than on his shoulder, to accommodate his father, who was a head shorter. Where Edward went, who was not? Many fell short of him by head and shoulders, too.

  Those who could not pretend to bearing any part of the blessed burden nevertheless reached a hand on one side or the other, at least to touch, and so walked slowly with the bearers, and among them went Llewelyn and David, one upon either side. Others came to touch but once as the coffin passed. So they carried Saint Edward up the stone stairway into his new chapel, a spacious place floored in red and green porphyry and Purbeck marble, with the great shrine of the same materials in the midst, studded everywhere with semi-precious stones and mosaic work, with a tiered feretory of solid gold at the top. And in this sumptuous tomb they laid him, and heard the first mass of the new church sung in his honour.

  It so chanced that I had a place from which there was a clear view of the king's chair, and while mass was said I watched him, for he was so bright and pale that the light seemed almost to shine through him. His seat was raised, and the shrine of the saint was very lofty, and I think he could see, above the high altar, the golden crest of the feretory that marked the holy place. He never took his eyes from it, and for the first time I saw his face free of the single, strange blemish that had always spoiled his comeliness and kingliness, that drooping of one eyelid that cast shadows of doubt over his proffered honesty and gave warning of his twisting ability to deceive, a flaw he had handed on to his son. Edward sat close beside him, his seat lower, but his face on a level with his father's. I had them almost in full-face, the one oval superimposed upon the other, the old upon the young, until the light played tricks and seemed to make the young change places and blot out the old. Henry was grown so fragile and clear, Edward was so large and solid and full of blood and bone, his vigour and violence overwhelmed the king's small, pale flame, but could not extinguish it.