The White Cross (9 page)

Above the central crossing of the Abbey, its famous tower rises a hundred feet into the sky. Domed and gilded, the great glass lantern spangles the chancel pavement with a thousand jewels of coloured light. A sacred grove, a sunlit clearing in a forest of stone columns, it is the place where every king since the first William has been crowned; where presently the latest of the line lies face-down before the shrine of the Confessor to crave forgiveness for his many well-attested sins.

Archbishop Baldwin, waiting to grant Richard absolution, has set himself for once to outshine the royal sinner. In place of his stark habit he’s assumed a jewelled mitre and a cope of flame and tawny silk, to make up what he lacks in height and clash deliberately with the royal purple; a garment that’s so heavily embroidered with gold wire it might have stood up without a man inside.

As Primate of all England, Baldwin’s required to be more opulent, essentially more powerful than its king. Yet as a Devon man it’s near impossible to play the gilded emperor without feeling absurd. Remembering a pedlar’s monkey he’d once seen dressed in crimson satin, he cannot help but smile at his approaching monarch, and pray to God to stop him laughing outright.

‘In the name of God I undertake to all Christians subject to my rule, these three things: First that I will strive to help the Holy Church of God, her ministers and people to preserve true peace.’

Richard’s polished golden head is raised to take the triple coronation oath as he stands face to face with Baldwin. His voice, the kind that only an outsized pair of lungs can possibly deliver, is sonorous and passionately sincere. ‘Secondly,’ he booms, ‘I swear that I’ll forbid rapacity and all iniquities to all degrees. Third, that in all judgements I will grant justice and true mercy in emulation of Almighty God the Merciful and Clement.’

While the congregation add Amens, Duke Richard applies his leonine moustache to the jewelled cover of Saint Edward’s bible and is led by his archbishop – looking this time, Baldwin rather fears, like some little fair-day fiddler leading an enormous bear – led north, south, east and west to each side of the Abbey crossing, to ask those in the chancel, in both transepts and the body of the church if they are willing to accept him as their Sovereign.

‘We will and grant it so!’ Four times the thunderous response. Then Richard kneels before the altar to demonstrate his own mortality, is stripped by his attendant bishops of every article of outer clothing, to stand at last before the congregation barefoot, bare-legged, in nothing but his shirt and drawers. Born to the purple, heir to the greatest monarch and richest doweress of the western world, the new king strides in his underclothing to anointing.

‘Let us anoint these hands with holy oil, as kings of old and prophets have been hallowed.’ Tentatively Baldwin dips his thumb into the ancient, evil smelling essence to daub an oily cross athwart the smooth white palms of one who’s never ridden but in gauntlets. He fumbles with the clasp at Richard’s shoulder to free the shirt and pull it down around his waist for the anointing of his upper body.

‘In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti…’ He traces lines like glistening snail creeps across the massive pectorals and barrel chest – the heavy pulse, the humid texture of perspiring skin, the multitude of gingery hairs beneath his thumb, all evidence of fleshly weakness, Baldwin struggles to believe, for all their male vitality.

‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost…’

A fourth cruciform marks the pale expanse of Richard’s back beneath the sunburnt collar line. Two more bless the fleshy saddle of each shoulder, a further two the elbows he lifts helpfully for unction; a movement in the kneeling prince which wafts the mingled odours of male sweat and French perfume to the unworldly nostrils of his archbishop.

‘In the name of the Father and of the Son…’ Disturbed and disconcerted by the man’s immense virility and something of a worrying response within himself, Baldwin makes the sign a ninth and final time across the royal brow, then wipes his hands, perceiving as he does so another kind of nakedness and one still more disturbing in Richard’s gleaming eyes.

With shirt replaced and Cap of Maintenance set on his head, the anointed monarch rises for his investiture in a brilliant shaft of red and purple sunlight from the Abbey lantern. He stands with legs apart, chin up, chest out, to be enfolded in a Florentine silk tunic and sensational dalmactic of cinnamon and gold brocade.

Girded with a jewelled braiel, armed with his father’s Sword of State, he steps into a pair of scarlet buskins and then waits splendidly aloof while two earls kneel to fit his golden spurs; whilst lesser constellations move around him. As each sacred item of adornment is brought to him from the altar, the Abbey choir fling alleluias to the vaulted roof. The archbishop bids the King receive the bracelets of Sincerity and Wisdom in token of his God’s embracing and winds the ancient torcs round Richard’s bulging biceps.

‘Receive the yoke of Christ by which you are subjected to the laws of God.’ A stole of purple China silk is looped round the royal neck and tied securely to the bracelets in a symbolically restrictive gesture, which Baldwin hopes against all likelihood the new king will take note of. But Richard can see nothing now beyond his own predestined pathway to the throne.

As each new vestment touches his body he reacts with a pleasure that is physical. He takes a breath, sucks in his belly for the buckled braiel, holds arms out for the torcs, while in his fleshy, handsome face there blazes a look of triumph which calls to Baldwin’s mind, uncomfortably, the pagan rites that underlie a Christian coronation.

‘Receive this pallium, formed with four corners, to show that all four corners of this universe are subject to the power of God,’ he recites with blatant emphasis as Richard dons a mantle of terrific value, inches thick with gold embroidery and studded with cabochon gems.

‘This vestment serves as a reminder that no frail mortal, be he king or emperor, may reign without authority from God, who is the
King
of Kings!’

Yet Richard stands, as frail as a bull elephant, as freighted with bullion and precious stones as any monarch of the Indies; glittering and coruscating; incandescent, radiating sparks of light; barbaric in his gaudy splendour. So dazzling that Baldwin has to blink.

His most Serene Lord Richard, by Grace of God first king to take that name in England, with half of Europe at his feet and the Holy City of Jerusalem in prospect, turns slowly in his scintillating train to set his sumptuous back-end on a throne flanked like the Chair of Solomon by life-sized gilded lions. As an anointed monarch he’s already half divine; already seated, if not on God’s right hand, then on a level close approaching His celestial knees.

The King’s bearded chin is up, his eyes are blazing.

Archbishop Baldwin draws a breath.
‘Lord forgive him. He is eager for the chance to prove himself,’
he reasons with the image of Divinity he keeps inside his head.
‘Given time and proper guidance, I’m certain, Lord, he will acquire a sense of balance.’

‘AND WHO PRECISELY WOULD YOU EXPECT TO GIVE A KING OF ENGLAND GUIDANCE IN SUCH MATTERS, IF NOT YOURSELF, ARCHBISHOP?’ the uncompromising Voice of God ENQUIRES
.
‘MY SERVANT BECKET WASN’T SLOW, YOU MAY RECALL, TO BRING KING HENRY TO ACCOUNT.’

Which is a fair point,
the archbishop thinks; and before his courage can forsake him, Baldwin takes the plunge.

‘King Richard take good heed,’ he warns in his best sermonising tone. ‘A king is only fit to govern others while he governs in himself the vices of vainglory and impiety which ever have beset the princes of this world.’

The hollow spaces of the Abbey lend depth to his thin voice. ‘King Richard I forbid you by the bones of the Confessor to assume this honour in a state of pride.’

King Richard’s sandy lashes part. Two furrows of displeasure crease the royal brow. Green eyes lock with grey.

‘
Forbid
, Archbishop?’ he stonily enquires.

Even standing in his mitre, scarce taller than his monarch firmly seated, Baldwin speaks for once without apology.

‘By the Power of God that’s vested in me, I say you will assume the crown in true humility,’ he states flatly. ‘Or not at all.’

He waits, and for what seems an age to all attending there’s silence in the Abbey. Church over Crown? Crown over Church? Which is it to be?

And still he waits.

Then Richard’s overtaken by a spasm of pure rage that blanches his knuckles on the throne and leaves him shaking with the effort of control.

‘With God’s grace, Baldwin, and by my mother’s womb I will uphold against all hazards everything I’ve sworn,’ he finally asserts, ‘And that’s how I will be crowned – if not by your hand, priest, then by my own!’ With which he rises, seizes Saint Edward’s heavy crown and swings it high above his head; the purple stole drawn with it looping from his outstretched arms.

As the King stands poised to crown himself; godlike, oblivious to any power or glory but his own, Baldwin’s reminded of the old dark legend of Anjou – sees not a Christian prince, but the descendant of a fallen angel. He thinks of Lucifer in the Book of Isaiah:
‘I will raise my throne above the stars of God!’

By the power that’s vested in me, I forbid you to assume this honour in a state of pride!

Eyes closed, he says it silently this time through God’s own agency of prayer.
Remember, at at coronation a new king must become the virtues that he swears to.

‘No please…’ Willing Richard to believe it, he extends his own thin hands to take the crown, when all at once the little bells suspended from its golden arches begin to ring.

A muscle twitches in the crimson flush across the King’s well covered cheeks, and it becomes apparent that he’s shaking like a jelly.

‘Well then get on with it, you pious fool,’ he growls.

‘O Lord, the King rejoices in Your strength;

How great his joy in the victories You award!

For You have granted him his heart’s desire

And have not denied the prayer of his lips;

You have endowed him with the richest blessings

And set a crown of purest gold upon his head!’

The choir exults as Baldwin, with gravity and even more pronounced relief, reclaims the shaking crown to set it, gold on gold, on Richard’s head. But when the King resumes his throne his face is bathed in sweat. He shakes so violently that two earls have to climb the steps to hold the crown from either side and stop it falling to the floor.

‘Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!’

A thousand voices batter the stone cliffs of the Abbey walls. Its bells announce King Richard’s crowning to the populace beyond. Then all the bells of all the other churches in the square mile of London jangle their response; disturbances which in their turn set every city dog hysterically barking, clatter pigeons from the Abbey roof – and finally dislodge a sleeping bat from some tenebrous crevice high up in the lantern. Disorientated, the tiny creature flutters down a rainbow shaft of coloured sunlight to circle round and round the trembling figure of the King in Majesty upon his throne.

‘There’s nought amiss. You cannot think he is afraid. My son fears nothing of this world or out of it. His courage is a legend.’ Queen Eléonore’s deep voice. ‘It is the soldier’s malady of quartan malaria that makes him shake,’ she says emphatically. ‘We southerners are subject to it, as anyone could tell you who’s campaigned in the swamps of the Guienne.’

But behind the choir, the bells and Eléonore’s defiant statement, Baldwin can hear the echo of King Henry’s curse.

‘I call on heaven to curse Richard’s soul! May God deny it its eternal rest until I am avenged!’

Above, behind the bat which circles Richard’s head, there flickers through the old archbishop’s mind the arcane spectre of Angevin beginnings; a story whispered in the shadows.

With a sense of deep foreboding he recalls the superstition that King Henry’s line derives, not only from Anjou, but from a fallen angel. From Satan’s daughter, Mêlusine. From a black witch who, in sight of Christ’s Own Sacrament, was commonly supposed to have changed herself into a bat and flown in terror from the altar.

CHAPTER SIX

Yes well, I’m thinking. But the more I think the less I seem to know what’s best.

I’ve never found it hard to make my mind up in the past, and no one’s ever called me indecisive. But when I listened to Sir Garon trying to explain why he must join the Kings’ Croisade, I simply couldn’t think what was expected – if I should back him in a cause that everyone calls glorious and noble, or keep him home, as Maman says I should, by any means I can?

My Lady Isabel had given orders for her furnishings to be left in place for their return, when she and the Earl left Lewes for the new King’s coronation. So we were in her solar by the window at our usual occupation when Sir Garon and his mother came to see us.

I spin and weave proficiently if I say so myself. But Turkish-point embroidery and I have never quite seen eye to eye – and when I took up my frame that morning, I found my roses had turned overnight into pink cabbages, my little bluebirds into fat blue hens!

‘My goodness, what a climb!…’