‘Be he really gone?’ A young tall sandy-haired man had come up behind him.
‘Dead as meat,’ said Ozbern. ‘Dead as his father and my father and all the rest of ’ em. Dead as dust. Dead as rock. See, he can’t hurt you now.’ He lifted one of the King’s hands and the young man took a step back in fright. Ozbern examined the hand of his master, then pulled two splendid rings off the fingers and slipped them into his jerkin.
‘Here,’ said the young man, who had not been too frightened to see this. ‘They be not yours by no right. Put ’ em back.’
‘They’re mine by the same right as they were his,’ said Ozbern. ‘Where d’you think he got ’ em? D’you think they growed on his fingers like warts?’
They were all there now, all five of them, hesitant, frightened but greedy. To rob the body of the King; that meant death and thankful if it was quick. But who was to see? Who was to tell? Not the King.
‘And these. And these.’ Ozbern jerked a jewelled crucifix from round the dead man’s neck and pulled a fine diamond off the other hand. ‘If you’ve the fancy you would like ’em instead of me, just see if you can take ’em.’
They glanced sidelong at Ozbern, at each other, at the door, at the silent figure on the bed. Someone made a half move and the last rampart gave way. One snatched a leather belt with coins in, another a fine doublet and a gold dagger. Two together seized a silver cup and quarrelled over it, dropping it on the floor and rushing to snatch it again.
The tall young man, late on the move, found the best taken and clutched at the purple silk coverlet of the bed. While he was rolling this into a bundle two soldiers, brought by the noise, looked in. There was a moment’s pause as they entered, and Ozbern drew his dagger. But they too stared at the corpse and found their allegiance gone. One moved through the servants up to the bed and after a second glance at the King pulled the rich cloak from under his shoulders. The other, snatching at the sheets, tumbled the body on to the floor where it lay in sprawling protest among the rushes and the trampling feet. The servants seized the last of the plate, quarrelling over the linen and the robes.
But they didn’t waste time, knowing that some law, if not this man’s law, might return. One by one they pushed their way out, and, when there was no more to take, the last tramping foot echoed away down the stone corridor outside and the King was alone.
Hours passed and the rain stopped and a watery sun broke through, falling through the lattice upon an outstretched hand. The broth, Montfort’s broth, bubbled on the fire and as the fire died its bubbling died, while in neighbouring Rouen Montfort guarded his house and his mistress and his horses and his cattle from the rioting mobs that paraded the streets. There was no reason or sense in it, but the hand, the lawmaker’s hand was gone. All men, as the news came, barred their doors and hid their money and saw to their swords and knives.
In the abbey bee garden the bees were on the move; the sun had warmed them to a lethargic honey-laden activity; they droned in and out of the late flowers and bumped lazily against the lattice panes of the silent room. Tierce bell sounded, and at last a soft footstep came down the passage and halted at the open door. It was the monk with the thin veined hands. He peered nervously into the room and at first thought the King’s body had gone. Then he took another step and saw it lying half naked on the floor of the ransacked room. He turned on his heel and fled.
But this time he came back with others following him, and then someone found William the archbishop praying in his cell, and William came and told them to lift the body back on the bed, to compose the limbs decently and bring fresh linen. Then they formed a silent shamefaced procession and carried the body into the chapel before the high altar and began masses at once for his soul.
They’d bury him at St Stephen’s, they decided, the abbey he’d founded himself; it seemed suitable and right; it was sixty-odd miles, but they could make up a sizable procession. It would cost money, but someone would pay; the King had relatives, three sons, daughters, cousins, old friends. Some sort of show was only fitting for so great a man. The sons were not here, true enough, not even Robert who must come soon to claim his inheritance, not even Henry who had disappeared somewhere with his retinue, five thousand pounds of silver and all. The cousins? No, they had vanished. And the bodyguard? And the servants? They couldn’t be found. Even gold plate belonging to the monastery had gone.
Fortunately just at the last a man called Herlouin turned up. He had a small estate nearby and a good reputation. He didn’t know the King well, but he seemed willing to organize the thing and pay out what was needed.
The monks said they were glad of his help. In the meantime they sent some of their number to inquire for the King’s relatives, but no one came, and three days after his death the King made his last journey with strangers at his side.
They were expecting him at the town and had prepared. A procession with the Lord Abbot at its head met him outside the walls and turned and led the way in. Townspeople lined the streets and mixed with the monks and clergy who followed the bier. They stood and watched him pass and thought: Well, he’s come for the last time; it’s right that he should lie here where his wife is; he had his faults but there were worse; if they’d murdered him as they tried, as they murdered three of his guardians when he was still a boy, the others would have been much worse; and the old ones shook their heads and thought of Robert his father, Robert the Devil they called him, who’d been much worse, and the years of banditry that followed before this one put it all down; this one at least had been more like one of them; his mother’s father had been a tanner, the peasant streak was strong in him; he was a great man.
There is always something about a funeral.
So they crowded into the abbey church, and stood and knelt dumbly and many wept, though they couldn’t have told exactly what they were weeping for except, vaguely, for the mortality of all men. After the mass the Bishop of Evreux preached a moving sermon, while more people than ever crowded into the church and crushed about the bier and some thought they would suffocate.
‘Oh, my children,’ said the bishop, ‘ here lies your duke and your king. A great and a good man. A nobleman with all the knightly virtues of chivalry. A prince of Christendom. But in this present life no man can live without sin, no, whether he be king or commoner; so I ask you for the love of Christ that you intercede with God Almighty on behalf of our deceased prince; and, as you hope for your own forgiveness, that you forgive him if in anything he has offended against you.’
They thought that was the end, and crossed themselves and bowed to take the blessing. But someone else began talking, close beside the bishop, and they looked up to see a tall haggard man standing between the bishop and the bier. He was speaking in a clear shrill voice.
‘This place,’ he said, ‘this place where you propose to lay this man was once the yard belonging to my father’s house. Over there –’ he pointed – ‘were the stables, and here was the walled garden where as a boy I used to play. That man you pray for seized all this land, without any excuse in law, because he was all-powerful and no one could question him. But now he’s gone I publicly lay claim to the land that was stolen from me, and in God’s name I forbid that his body, the body of the spoiler and thief, should be laid to rest in the ground he stole.’
They waited with open mourns, gaping and pushing and staring. No one knew what to expect, and if the King’s kinsmen had been there the man would have been cut down. But only churchmen were present, and the tall man was untouched. He stood there, an obstruction to all the dignity of the ceremony, a grim uncompromising bar to the last solemn obsequies; he must be dealt with somehow, by reason or by violence.
The bishop said in a quiet voice:
‘Is this man speaking the truth?’
A priest standing by the bier turned and said:
‘He is Ascelin son of Arthur, my Lord. The King despoiled him. I know that to be true. It was his land the King gave to found this Abbey of St Stephen.’
The Lord Abbot had come up beside the bishop and they whispered together. The Lord Abbot was furious, his white, ascetic face flushed and blotchy; this man had committed sacrilege by his interference in a holy place.
The bishop said: ‘You are Ascelin son of Arthur whose land this was?’
‘Whose land this is, my Lord, for it was unlawfully taken from me.’
‘You would claim this soil which has been consecrated and given to God?’
‘God is the defender of right and cannot surely condone injustice.’
The abbot was about to make an angry reply, but the bishop put a hand on his arm.
‘Supposing your case to be a good one, my son, you’ll agree that we cannot tear down this church and restore your home and your garden. What then would you have us do?’
‘At least turn this man out. Scatter his bones where you please but don’t bury him here.’
‘You see the grave,’ said the bishop. ‘It’s dug and the coffin is waiting to be lowered, the corpse blessed and embalmed. It is late to turn back now. Let us buy from you the seven feet of earth in which this man shall rest. Then justice will be done and he can lie in peace.’
For the first time the tall haggard man hesitated. A glint came into his eye. ‘What do you offer me for it?’
The bishop turned to the man at his side.
‘Forty shillings,’ snapped the Lord Abbot.
‘It’s worth eighty,’ said the thin man.
The abbot glanced angrily at the gaping mob.
‘Fifty shillings and have done with it.’
‘It’s worth eighty,’ repeated Ascelin. ‘Land changed hands near here not a month since. Apart from the value of the house and stables. I’ll take seventy as a concession.’
The priests whispered together again. The Lord Abbot was now for violence.
The bishop said: ‘The abbot will pay you sixty shillings for the grave. It is not an unreasonable price. Come, my son, I think that is fair.’
‘And for the rest? I’ll take sixty shillings now if the rest is compensated for at the same price.’
‘How much of this have you fair claim to?’
‘About half.’
‘For the rest proportionately then,’ said the bishop, taking it on himself. ‘Go with this monk and he will give you the first payment at once.’
‘You agree to that, my Lord?’ said Ascelin to the abbot.
‘I agree to that!’
‘Very well. It has been agreed before all these people. Be it so.’ Ascelin turned and followed the monk.
When his tall bony head and shoulders had disappeared at the chancel door Bishop Gilbert made a hasty sign to the Lord Abbot and they resumed the service.
But the emotional temperature had fallen, and in so falling the reverence and the sorrow had slipped away. Men stirred and murmured together. The close confinement, the heat, the smell, were too much, and many were already pushing out of the church into the street where they could talk and argue in greater ease.
The bishop lifted up his fine voice. ‘Oh, Almighty God, we beseech thee to receive the body and soul of this thy faithful servant, William, sixth Duke of Normandy, first Norman King of England. Grant him rest, mercy at the Throne of Judgment and the eternal glory of salvation through the intercession of Christ thine only son. Amen.’
As the coffin was lowered into its grave the great bell began to toll. It disturbed the pigeons in the tower and they rose in a flock, like handfuls of paper thrown with the wind, fluttering noisily into the hazy sky above the town and above the thick congealed smoke of the burning houses, above the thin snake of the river and the flat rich Norman plains. They turned in a great circle against the land and the sky. Far in the north the sea glinted and glimmered in the afternoon sun.
As the bell finished tolling, the last of the people streamed out of the church and the pigeons began to settle into the tower again.
The Cornish Farm
We were looking for a farm.
It seems to me that a great many people have this ambition at some time in their lives, especially in years of tribulation. Their yeoman ancestry comes out; they want to own a few acres and see things grow.
Many no doubt give up after a while. But I was lucky enough to find one.
It was Philippa who suggested we should try the West Country. She’d a fancy for the milder side of England and had a few relatives scattered about who might help. I began in Wiltshire and worked my way zig-zag in a series of knight’s moves farther and farther west, gathering disillusionment.
I’m no stickler for absolute cleanliness and order, but it depressed me to discover the squalor in which so many people live. Or perhaps it is only people who want to sell their houses who live that way. It also depressed me to discover the wickedness of estate agents. After a time one gets tired of being shown into the ‘ well-equipped’ kitchen to find it dominated by an enormous stove installed about the year of Gladstone’s wedding and smoking from every crack; then, coughing heartily and with eyes smarting, to be led through a broken glass door into the ‘conservatory’ which in fact is a lean-to shed with a little stove of its own where all the real cooking is done and ventilation is by way of a sloping tin funnel. No more desirable is the ‘ desirable residence’ which turns out to be a paper-thin bungalow divided from the cowsheds by an hour-glass pool of liquid manure, while the sacks of chicken meal are piled in the lavatory and double carpeting in the hall fails to hide the dry rot.
And these, mind you, properties for which large sums of hard-earned money are asked, sums requiring sober visits to grey-faced bank managers, and swearing one’s life away, and the long yoke of mortgaging. When I reached Cornwall I was nearly giving up, because there was no farther to go unless one jumped into the sea.
And then a word over a glass of beer in a local pub sent me across country to the south coast looking for a farm called Pencarrion.
I found it, empty and for sale.
This wasn’t the sort of place I’d been looking for either. The farmhouse was really an old Elizabethan house come down in the world. In parts ‘ come down’ were the operative words. One room had a sycamore growing out of the roof. And there was no market town near. But it had 40 acres of pasture and 9 of woodland, some fruit trees in the ruins of a walled garden and a short drive bordered with blue hydrangeas. In the skirts of the woodland was the chimney of an old tin-mine. The place had been empty about a year, but a neighbouring farmer had used the land, so it came near to being in the ‘good heart’ that one reads so much about in the advertisements.
The price was not unreasonable for these days, I mean not more than would have bought a country estate and a mansion twenty years ago. But it was a third less than most of the other ruins I had been inspecting, so I sent a soberly worded telegram to Philippa. When she came it took her exactly seven minutes to make up her mind, which was three minutes less than I had reckoned on. Only once, just before the contracts were exchanged, she said to the local solicitor who was acting for both parties:
‘I hope there’s no snag that we don’t know about – a plague of rats, for instance, or too much arsenic In the subsoil …’
It’s quite unusual these days to see false teeth as regular as piano keys – they’re going out at last – but he gave us a good view of his.
‘Nothing to our knowledge, madam. It was the big house of the district at one time, and the old men seldom made mistakes where they built their homes.’
Well, we moved in. There was nothing wrong, except what neglect and weather had done. It was probably the collapsed north end of the house that had scared away buyers, but in fact we solved that pretty quickly. Two bricklayers in a matter of weeks sealed off the end and we were left with half a house that was quite reasonably weatherproof and cosy. We took on two local men, one called Bray and one called Aukett, and we got down to the hard business of making a living.
At first the district was strange. There are parts of Cornwall which are still
foreign to the Anglo-Saxon. It took time to get used to the antiquity of the house itself. I used to look round sometimes and speculate that the masons who had laid these stones had perhaps been doing so while Anne Boleyn was an up-and-coming young deb at the court of Henry. Men living then might have remembered Bosworth Field. It was difficult to realize. I would have liked to find out more about the Pencarrions who had first settled here and who for three centuries had been masters of the district, but Philippa said no.
‘Let’s take it as it stands,’ she said. ‘It has no memories for us. Why should we try to create them?’
Sound enough advice, probably. But as it happened it was she who made the first real discovery about the people who had lived here.
No one had touched the apple trees in the semi-walled garden for about five years, and before the leaves had fallen I was at them with saw and pruning knife and creosote, not because I believed this occupation would ease our financial stress but for pure love of aesthetic form. Nothing looks worse than an apple tree gone to overgrowth, nothing better than one pruned back to its fruiting spurs.
It was while I was at this scarecrow occupation, balanced in a ridiculous posture fifteen feet in the air while sawdust blew in my eyes and the branches whipped and jabbed, that I saw right across the farmyard to where Philippa was in earnest conversation with Aukett. The conversation roused my curiosity because it went on so long.
Over supper that night I asked her about it. She seemed to want to put me off, and then when I wouldn’t be, she said:
‘What was the name of the last owner here?’
‘Tredinnick.’
‘And before that?’
‘Boduel, I think.’
‘That’s it. Boduel. Aukett was telling me about Boduel. He went raving mad.’
I said: ‘He must have banged his head once too often on that lavatory door.’
‘No, seriously. This was about seven years ago. They’d only been living here about 2 years at the time. Boduel was a Cornishman, Aukett says, who’d made a lot of money in London and came to retire here. He came down with his wife from London, and they brought a couple of servants with them.’ Philippa looked round the room. ‘It was Boduel who renovated the place.’