Ten Minute Tales : Westminster Abbey 1064 by Helen Hollick

Ten Minute Tales

For your entertainment

a different 'Ten Minute Tale' every day

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As a little self-indulgence - and because I've been promoting other authors more than myself...
I'm going to approach the looming end of our series with some (chosen at random) excerpts from my own books
today an excerpt from

Harold the King (UK title) / I Am The Chosen King (US title) 

Westminster – June 1064

England was at peace, Malcolm of Scotland had reneged on his treaty of homage, raiding over the borders into Northumbria, but Earl Tostig  had handled the situation with diplomatic negotiation, and had signed a new treaty. Mind, there were some in Northumbria, the older warriors, who grumbled that he ought to have attacked in return, taught Scotland a lesson as old Earl Siward would have done. They were the men who held no liking for the King’s favourite though, the ones who would stir trouble whenever excuse was offered them.

   As Harold had intended, Wales was too occupied with internal wrangling between her fledgling princes to turn an eye towards England. Norway and Denmark were busy also, with their seesawing political arguments. Apart from seasonal pirate raids – an ongoing hazard for any coastal village or river-accessible settlement – peace had wafted over the whole country like a pleasant, hay-scented summer. Except there was no peace for Harold’s spirit. The new-awakened lure of adventure, action and excitement bucked within him. He was bored by the routine inactivity of King Edward’s court.

   Although a chill breeze was blowing off the river Thames – the wind often became more inclement with the flood tide, Edward insisted on personally inspecting the rising grandeur that was his abbey and expected those at court to accompany him. Leofwine, Harold’s younger brother, arriving at Westminster, had been invited to visit the building site almost before he had risen from his knee on greeting the King.

   “But you must see my abbey!” Edward declared. In his enthusiasm, he leapt to his feet. “It is now more splendid than ever I had imagined it would be. Come, let me have my cloak fetched, I shall show you straightway!”

   “We shall all go!” Edith, the Queen, trilled as she ensured Edward’s cloak was tucked around his body and his cap fitted snug over his silvered hair, and, “Do you want your gloves, my dear? You know how your hands chap from the cold.” Treating him more as an ageing father, Edith had found her niche as the dutiful wife who looked to his every daily need, tending his apparel, cutting his meat, warming hands and feet, rubbing salves into his aching knees.

   Edward contentedly basked in her various attentions; it was all he had ever wanted, someone to mother him. He patted her arm, smiled an aimless, distant acknowledgement, talking all the while to Leofwine. “You will be most surprised at how far the work has progressed – why, it actually begins to look like an abbey at last! You younger ones, you must come also,” Edward added, waving his arm at the children. “The fresh air will put colour in your faces.” He threaded his arm companionably through Leofwine’s. “We have been having problems with the labourers: every so often they decide to stop work for one trivial reason or another – the ramps are too steep and slippery, the conditions too wet. Yet I am paying them good wages, they get hot food once a day and I provide a Christian burial for those unfortunates who, through their own carelessness, meet with accidents. Only the other day a man stupidly stood right under a hoist – the rope had frayed and the stone that was being lifted…well, he was crushed instantly. Dear Leofwine, you should have heard the wailing from his widow! We told her it was his own fault for standing where he did; I gave her a penny from my own purse, that seemed to satisfy her.” Edward, talking rapidly, stepped through the doorway and out into the sunlight.

   Edith, her own cloak secured, ushered the younger children before her, smiling at the Lady Alditha who had made ready with the rest of the assembly. She was a quiet creature, obviously ill at ease at court, but then, few had made her welcome, unable to forget her father’s outrageous acts of treason, or the fact that she had been married to a heathen Welshman. On several occasions Edith had overheard the women whispering between themselves about it – she refused to be drawn into ignorant conversations, but privately she did wonder if it was true what they said about a Welshman’s manhood, that it was…Edith frowned, or was that a Jewish man…? She flushed. Whatever, she ought not be thinking of such details.

   “My dear,” she said, reaching her hand forward to take Alditha’s within her own. “You are still so pale. Come! You will walk with my brother Harold, I am certain he can bring a smile to your cheeks.”

   With a single, almost careless nod of assent at his sister, Harold held out his arm for the lady, noting her dipped head and blush as she took it.

   The two demure sisters, Margaret and Christine, walked, hands folded within their long sleeves, behind the Earl of Wessex. At seventeen and fifteen, these two daughters of Ædward the Exile had grown into pleasing young women, the youngest the image of her mother Agatha, who had passed into heaven less than a year after their father had so ill-fatedly died on arriving in London. Both had expressed a desire to dedicate themselves to God, although as their guardian Edward had made other plans for Margaret. A promise of considering giving her hand to Malcolm of Scotland had been a sure way for Earl Tostig to tame the Scots’ lust for border warfare. Their twelve-year-old brother Edgar, the ætheling, once outside in the courtyard, made off at a run with Harold’s sons Magnus and Edmund, whooping and hollering. The children loved to explore the building site, though they often annoyed the workmen, taking full advantage of the knowledge that no one would dare protest at their squawking nuisance.

   The King took great pleasure in having the younger folk around his court, their laughter a contrast to the sombre faces of his councillors and lords. There would be over-much sobriety, he often declared, were it not for their gaiety. Edith would agree with him, though never did she forget that were it not for his own refusal of intimacy, her children would be among those who romped together like inexhaustible hound pups.

   “So, my Lady,” Harold said as he strolled with Alditha, “I am ordered by the Queen to make you laugh. What would you prefer? That I tumble a few acrobatics or shall I recount an inane jest? I know several. I could perhaps sing. My cracked voice would raise a smile to the most solemn of faces.”

    “I thank you, but I am well content.”

    “The Queen does not think so.”

   The Queen, Alditha thought, can go boil her arrogant, interfering head in oil. Said aloud, “The Queen is most sweet. She has personally ensured that my every comfort has been attended to.”

   Harold guffawed. “It is entirely possible that you are the only living person to refer to my sister as ‘sweet.’ Our own mother would describe her more as sour vinegar; and if she is interested in your welfare then I assume it is because she has some private motive.” Harold guided Alditha around a pile of horse dung. They could hear Edward ahead, his high-pitched voice berating those responsible for not sweeping the courtyard.

    “Oh, she has a motive,” Alditha answered, glancing sideways at the man beside her. “She is decided to find me a husband more suitable than the one I had before.”

    “That ought not be too difficult! Gruffydd was a toad. We can surely find you a frog or a tadpole.”

   When Alditha did not smile, Harold bent his head closer to hers and said with exaggerated seriousness, “It was a jest. You are supposed to laugh.”

    “Why? It was not amusing.”

  “No, but women are obliged to flatter the male ego by politely acknowledging our attempts at wit.”

     “We are more likely to laugh at your absurdities.”

    The quick retort came with a hint of a smile; Harold caught it, raised a finger. “There, you see, already I have pleased the Queen. You have smiled.”

    “I assure you it was not intentional.”

    “No matter whether ’twas or not. A smile well suits you.”

    A pinkness grazed Alditha’s cheeks at the flattery. She had spoken only half the truth when she had told him that she was content. What was contentment for a young widow? She was of noble birth, with her own land and entitlement. Her brother Eadwine was Earl of Mercia, a county that had once been a kingdom in its own right. Marriage with her was of potential value to any man who sought a means to step on to the dais of power. Her future consisted of but two choices: marry a man she would probably despise, or enter a nunnery. Neither would be of her own, free-willed choosing, but a woman such as she did not have the luxury of free will or choice. She despaired of the shallowness of Edward’s court, the gossip, the blatant pushing and shoving to reach a higher rung on the hierarchical ladder. The hypocrisy of it all! An improvement on living as wife to Gruffydd ap Llewelyn, however.

     “Truly, my lord Earl,” she said, “I am content, and if it pleases you and the Queen, than I shall smile more often.”

    Pleased at achieving his mission, Harold squeezed her cool fingers, his face shadowing into a frown as he caught a glimpse of his eldest son’s glowering expression.

    Goddwin stared with intense hostility at his father, his unblinking eyes challenging Harold to declare an interest in the half-Welsh woman. He could not see why his father was so drawn to her – huh, that was not true. No man whose pizzle was in working order could deny her beauty. Her dark hair, heart-shaped face, willow-thin figure and the way the light danced in her eyes…jealousy, an evil goblin that so easily wormed its way into the soul and mouldered there. He adored his mother, could not understand or accept what Edyth had always expected: that one day Harold would set her aside and take another wife into his bed.

     He had not wanted to come to court with his father; there was much to do on the estate that Harold had granted him as a wedding gift. That roan colt was ready for breaking to harness and the chestnut mare who had experienced difficulty with her first foaling needed careful watching. Goddwin preferred horses to people. People always expected too much of you: witty conversation, merry jigging to dance tunes, interest in their personal problems. Horses wanted only to please, to be fed, watered and groomed, to have their feet regularly trimmed; horses never held a grudge or made prejudiced judgement. You knew where you were with horses.

     Harold met that jealous stare, lifted a questioning eyebrow, to which Goddwin ducked his head. They had quarrelled so often of late, father and son. Since Harold had brought this woman out of Wales, in fact. The Welshman’s Whore, the court called her behind her back, save for two nights past when Goddwin had overheard an inebriated conversation conducted by two men of Edward’s household. Harold’s whore, they had said, cackling in that suggestive, crude way. Harold’s whore.

    Angry, Goddwin turned abruptly away from the gaggle of men and women around the King. Let them prattle about his damned abbey. Goddwin would have none of it. Fortunately, Edward did not see him go.

    The ground ascended gently from the palace, slowing Edward’s initial exuberant pace and bringing the breath puffing into his lungs. Perhaps it was his increasing age that made the slope seem the steeper? Next birthing day he would be sixty years of age and they told him often that he ought to take more rest. Piffling nonsense! He might be missing a few teeth and his sight be more blurred than once it had been, his hearing not so sharp, but he could still sit a horse and gallop with the rest of those young whelps when a stag was running. And his mind was alert, his bladder and bowels controlled; he was not yet the dotard they claimed him to be.

     Ahead of the party, the east end of his abbey stood in all its splendour, a vast, soaring structure of Reigate stone, the sun’s rays striking down through the wind-hustled clouds, highlighting the lantern tower as if God Himself were pointing out its wonder.

     The square, lead-roofed tower stood six storeys high, rearing into the sky above the crossed section of north and south transepts, the army of surrounding roof turrets standing like a cluster of guardian sentries. The tiled roofing, above apse, transepts and upper part of the nave, had been set in place as soon as the walls had risen to keep the stone and timber structures below dry. Once the rain was kept out, work had progressed rapidly.

     From this eastern approach the holy place looked almost complete, for as was traditional with cathedral and abbey constructions, building ranged from east to west. The height of the northern transept, immediately ahead of the royal party, successfully hid the slower progress to the western end – which consisted of the half-built northern wall of the nave, one tower flanking the western entrance completed but for its roof and its potential twin standing as a single storey of stonework. There was still much to be done.

    They stood a moment, the group of onlookers, heads tipped back, gaping up at the great height of the tower, marvelling at the diminutive figures of men clambering over and along the higgle-piggle of scaffolding, not one of them seemingly concerned about the distance down to the ground. For many of those watching – save for those fortunate few who had made pilgrimage to Rome, or visited the grand new cathedrals that were springing up all over France and Italy – this was the tallest building they had ever seen. It was certainly impressive.

     Edward entered through the cavern in the north transept that would, one day, be the northern entrance door and proudly led his audience into another world. The square tower was borne over the crossing by an elaborate array of unobtrusive stone arches, like the branches of a gigantic oak supporting the canopy above. Spiralling stairs reached up inside, set in artistic symmetry against plain walls that rose to the carved beams of the roof. Windows, set at especial angles, allowed in wide shafts of sunlight that harboured a myriad of floating, dancing particles of dust. It was a beautiful church. Uncluttered by unnecessary ornamentation, its clean lines gave an overpowering sense of length and height, a continuity of unbroken space stretching from one end to the other that, when finished, would cover more than 330 feet in length. The nave would support six double bays per side – two longer than the cathedral of Jumièges. Arches, each resting on plain cylindrical columns below a triforium stage with a gallery surrounding the vaulted aisles, and above that, the clerestory shadowed below the eaves. Further windows pierced the solidity of the lower walls, bringing light cascading down into the enclosed space. The abbey of Westminster was to be long and high, but there would be no gloom within. God’s house, lit by God’s hand.

      Allowing sufficient pause for gasps and a crackle of admiring applause, Edward passed the raised steps that would lead to the main altar and thrust out his arm to indicate an open space. “Here,” he said extravagantly, “is where I shall be laid to rest. Close to the bosom of God, where I shall sleep in peace within the sanctity of this glorious place.”

    His audience nodded; no one dared comment that the abbey of Westminster with all the banging, hammering, lifting, straining, chiselling and shouting was, at this moment, anything but a place of peace.

© Helen Hollick

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