The Cross Legged Knight (43 page)

‘You fell asleep content, I thought.’

‘I did. But I woke frightened. God has lifted the
darkness, He has lifted my heart from despair. But for a day, a week?’

Owen gathered her to him and held her, whispering his love. It was all he knew to do.

W
hat had been a golden autumn had shifted into days and nights of gusty winds and drizzle that felt like needles on the face after sunset. Thoresby had the servants keep the braziers in his chamber and parlour alight from early morning until he retired. At his age he dreaded the shock of cold bedding. But he was free of Wykeham at last and tomorrow he would ride to Bishopthorpe, casting off all the cares his sojourn in York had brought. One of his last tasks was to spend a few hours in communion with his old friend, Sir Ranulf. It was noon on a market day and the minster nave was peopled with country folk gawking up at the soaring transepts as they prayed. He kept well in the shadows as he skirted the worshippers and slipped into the Pagnell chapel. But the murmur of prayer disappointed him. He had hoped to be alone here. While he hesitated, considering a later visitation, the figure kneeling before the tomb moved, the veiled head turned. It was Emma Ferriby, dressed in a plain white wimple, dark veil and gown. Her ivory rosary beads were her only ornament. She
bowed her head to him, then returned to her prayers.

Thoresby knelt beside her and fell to ruminating on Sir Ranulf’s departure, trying to see again the expressions that had moved across the old knight’s face during the ceremony that had blessed him on his way, wishing he might understand in those memories what had gone wrong, and whether his friend had been prepared to suffer and die for his king. He remembered pride, humour and an abiding peace that affected everyone that day, cheering even Lady Pagnell and Emma. He prayed that his friend had been able to call up that peace in his last days, that he had felt it a good death, an honourable passing, and that he looked down from heaven now and smiled to see the cross-legged knight he had become in death.

Fighting tears, Thoresby rose to leave Emma in peace. But she rose also, genuflected, crossed herself with her beads and was following him out when she paused, touched the altar cloth, traced the outline of a crusader knight on the end.

‘I want to thank you for making the reconciliation possible between Mother and Bishop William,’ Emma said. ‘She is at last able to mourn Father.’

‘I am glad of it. And, I confess, grateful to have the bishop gone from York.’ He held out an arm for her. She slipped her hand through it.

Out on the minster steps they paused.

‘Then it is true you are headed for Bishopthorpe?’ Emma asked.

‘Tomorrow, God willing.’

They stood for a moment on the steps of the minster, a swirling mist beading her veil.

‘What is to become of your mother’s steward?’ Thoresby enquired.

‘Mother has no more need of him, nor would she
have him if she did. But to my amazement my brother Stephen is considering engaging him, weighing Matthew’s knowledge of the estate against his poor judgement.’

‘I do not wonder at your amazement. Pray God Stephen does not regret his decision.’

They lapsed again into a companionable silence.

Then Thoresby asked, ‘How is your intractable son?’

Emma turned to him with a smile and he saw pride in her eyes. ‘John’s wounds are healing well. He speaks as if his grandfather has at last succeeded in teaching him the lesson he had so often tried to teach him in life. Foolhardiness is not the same as courage. To chase after trouble is not the way of a knight.’

So the lad felt as Thoresby did, that Sir Ranulf’s influence yet lived on in those he had touched in life.

‘And you, my child? Is it enough that Wykeham brought your father’s heart to rest in York?’

‘The dreams have ceased and I feel Father’s presence in the chapel. It is enough for me.’

H
istory is fluid. With each passing moment our perception of the past changes in subtle ways. Yet in order to create a cohesive world for Owen Archer I’ve needed to establish parameters, choose among theories and then adhere to them as much as I can.

A case in point is the demolition of St Mary-ad-Valvas. Records indicate that the church was demolished circa 1362 to provide space for York Minster’s lady chapel. The Royal Commission on Monuments is firm on this. Yet in a will of 1376 a cabinet is left to the church, which has inspired speculation that the church had been moved rather than demolished. I have chosen to use the Royal Commission’s date. Excavations in 1967 partially exposed the foundations, and it appeared that St Mary-ad-Valvas had been a small parish church, little more than a chapel. So I think it unlikely that it would have been made the object of a salvage relocation.

Opinions also vary about Archbishop Thoresby’s use of his York palace – I have frequently moved his
household to York in the Owen Archer mysteries. I have previously remained rather vague about the layout of the palace, but the present book required that I establish a floor plan. And so it may seem to some to have grown, now sporting two halls, a porch, and an attached kitchen in the middle of two wings. I have Charles Robb to thank for the plan based on archeological evidence, the topography of the area, and the discussion of bishops’ houses in Michael Thompson,
Medieval Bishops’ Houses in England and Wales
(Ashgate, 1998).

Among the actual historic figures who people the Owen Archer novels are two enigmatic statesmen who seemed locked in combat all their public lives, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester. A career could be built on a study of either men, so contradictory do the sources seem. Lancaster is remembered as the ruthlessly ambitious second son of Edward III, determined to control his nephew Richard II in the early days of his rule, to control Parliament, and to set himself up as King of Castile and León. But there are other aspects to him that suggest a warmer character. It is believed that he was devoted to his first wife, the beautiful heiress Blanche of Lancaster, and he recognized the children he fathered with his long-term mistress Catherine Swynford even before he married her (his third wife). His open relationship with her while wed to Constance of Castile was a great scandal and harmed his political ambitions. Paradoxically, his support of the religious reformer John Wycliff was purported to have been inspired by religious devotion. It is these complexities that keep scholars engaged in studying him.

William of Wykeham is remembered as an advocate of education for those who would enter Holy Orders,
founding a school for boys in Winchester and a college at Oxford, as well as having been the talented architect of Edward III’s extensive renovation and expansion of Windsor Castle (although Tout’s opinion is that he was not technically gifted but merely a good administrator – see reference below). Conversely, his terms as Lord Chancellor of England were riddled with administrative irregularities, particularly financial ones (his enemies claimed that he had complete control of England’s finances from 1361-70 and had abused his power in appropriating sums from the treasury for his own use). Rumours abounded that he was illiterate and ill-equipped for the high offices he held in Church and State.

Gaunt seems to have been more hated than loved by his contemporaries, Wykeham more loved (or admired) than hated. This polarity in itself makes rich material for fictional characters.

The conflict between the pair came to a head in 1376 in the Good Parliament, when Lancaster succeeded in stripping Wykeham of his titles and much of his income. It seemed such a personal vendetta that, as noted in the Dictionary of National Biography:

Popular prejudice sought for more hidden reasons. Hence we have the scandalous story given by the St Albans chronicler and other of his contemporaries of the doubtful birth of John of Gaunt. It was said that the queen [Phillippa of Hainault], when brought to bed at Ghent, was delivered of a female child, which she accidentally overlay, and that, fearing the king’s anger, she substituted for it the son of a Flemish woman. On her deathbed the queen had confessed the secret to the Bishop of Winchester, with the injunction that, should the
time ever come when there might be a prospect of John of Gaunt succeeding to the crown, the truth should be made known. It was the publication of this secret which had engendered in Lancaster his deadly hatred of Wykeham. That such a story could be fabricated and find acceptance is a sufficient indication of the extreme unpopularity of the duke, and of the widespread suspicion of his designs in regard to the succession.

The hostility between the two men became a public spectacle with the Earl of Pembroke’s condemnation of Wykeham to parliament, which was instrumental in his loss of the office of Lord Chancellor in 1371. And I suspect that the increasing influence of parliament at this time facilitated the spread of gossip about those in power. For further reading about these two see Anthony Goodman,
John of Gaunt: the Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe
(Longman, 1992); George Herbert Moberly,
Life of William of Wykeham: Sometime Bishop of Winchester, and Lord High Chancellor of England
(Warren and Son, 1887); W. M. Ormrod,
The Reign of Edward III
(Tempus, 2000); and T. F. Tout,
Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England
, vol. III (Manchester University Press, 1928; rpt 1967).

In the 14th century the cross-legged knight was a popular motif on tombs, particularly on those of men who had fought in the Crusades. Although the connection of crusaders with the motif is not universally held, few would argue against it as a device for a man who died in the faith.

So many prominent people were buried with their bodies in one tomb, their hearts in another, Robert the Bruce being perhaps the most famous, that it might be
surprising to learn that the Church officially disapproved of the practice. I won’t go into the unpleasant details of how the bodies were processed, but it was a practical means by which the remains of a person dying on foreign soil could be transported home for burial. It became a symbol of status for families and churches, and a political instrument – a statement that one was important enough to have multiple burials, that a church possessed a part of a certain renowned figure, that an establishment was considered worthy of such a memorial. On 27 September 1299 Pope Boniface VIII issued a bull stating that the disembowelment and division of the bodies of nobles and statesmen was an abomination and those who continued such practices would be excommunicate. He reissued the bull the following year. But the practice had become so well established that the bull was circumvented. For a fascinating analysis see Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: the Legislation of Boniface VIII on the Division of the Corpse,” in
Viator
12 (1981): 221-270. A more general study of burial practices can be found in
The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336
, Caroline Walker Bynum (Columbia University Press, 1995), and regarding childhood baptism and burial see Kathryn Ann Taglia’s paper “The Cultural Construction of Childhood: Baptism, Communion, and Confirmation” in
Women, Marriage, and Family in Medieval Christendom
, ed. C. M. Rousseau and J. T. Rosenthal (Western Michigan University, 1998).

For those puzzled by the difference between a tanner and tawyer, the former worked with larger hides, usually those of cattle, and used oak bark in processing them, whereas a tawyer worked with the smaller and less durable hides of other animals such as rabbits and
goats, and used alum and oil to process them. For further information see John Cherry, “Leather,” in
English Medieval Industries
, John Blair and Nigel Ramsay, eds. (Hambledon Press, 1991) pp. 295-318; and Heather Swanson,
Medieval Artisans
(Basil Blackwell, 1989).

And for several of the medical treatments in this book see Faye Marie Getz, ed.,
Healing and Society in Medieval England: A Middle English Translation of the Pharmaceutical Writings of Gilbertus Anglicus
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1991). For a general discussion of charms see Richard Kieckhefer,
Magic in the Middle Ages
(Cambridge University Press, 1989).