The Cunning of the Dove Page 8

  Earl Harold alone benefited from this cowardly murder. Now he could keep undisturbed his share of Sweyn’s lands, and in addition he received part of the lands of Beorn; though the rest went to Leofric, just to prove that there could be great men in England who were not kin of the house of Godwin.

  The amazing thing is that within a year Godwin managed to win a pardon for his eldest son; or rather Bishop Aldred did, who could compose any quarrel. The murderer was restored not only to the King’s peace, but also to his Earldom.

  As the King gained in assurance (for he had been very shy when first I knew him) he bothered less about whether his behaviour might seem eccentric. Especially in his bedchamber, among his intimates, he would say whatever came into his head. So I was not particularly surprised when one evening, while we were at Winchester for the Easter crownwearing of 1050, he asked me gravely whether I had ever seen the Devil. I answered that since I had come to court I had met many of his servants, but that I had never seen the Fiend in person.

  ‘I saw him this morning,’ the King said simply, ‘and he was really so ugly that it was hard not to feel sorry for him. Perhaps he wasn’t Satan himself, for there was no pride in the creature; yet he was certainly one of the princes of Hell. God’s foe for all eternity – what a fate! No wonder there was a hangdog air about him. But he got into that condition of his own free will, and now it’s too late to pity him.’

  ‘Good Heavens, my lord, where did you see him and what did he do to you?’ I asked in amazement. The King had spoken as casually as if relating that he had heard an early cuckoo.

  ‘Come, Edgar, use your head. Where would he be, in a court like this, where in general we try to keep the Commandments? Not sitting on the edge of a bed, waiting for the wrong partner to creep in. He was in the treasury, of course, with his hairy arms wrapped round a sack of silver. This year’s war-tax has just come in, and poor dear Hugolin asked me to come and help him gloat over it. I like Hugolin, and he’s as honest as anyone of his trade can be. But after all he is a Norman, and the only weakness of those fine fellows is that in general they are a little too fond of money. Hugolin is very proud of his full treasury; he told me that no other treasurer in Christendom could show the like. Then he added that no other King in Christendom has the right to levy a war-tax in time of peace, and when I thought it over I had to agree with him. All taxes are devilish things, but a war-tax in time of peace reeks of the Pit. It’s no wonder the Devil approves, and helps us to collect it.’

  ‘But what did you do, my lord? How did you get rid of him?’

  ‘I didn’t. I left him sitting there, just beyond that wall. As things are, he has a right to sit in my treasury. Next year he will have to leave. When that money has been spent there will be no more of those sacks of silver under my roof, handy perches for the chief devils in Hell. At tomorrow’s meeting of the Council I shall abolish the war-tax. I have been stupidly slow to see that such a tax ought to be abolished. Besides the wickedness of the whole conception of it, collecting money in peacetime to pay idle soldiers who have no enemy to fight, the tax is a reminder of the saddest and most shameful epoch in the history of the English. Do you know that it was first collected by my father? King Ethelred used it, not to pay soldiers, but to bribe Danish pirates to go away. He did that year after year until the thing became a custom. Of course Canute, though in many ways he was a good man, was too greedy to end a custom that brought so much money into his treasury. But I shall end it. The pirates may never come again, now that most of them are Christians of a sort. If they come the whole levy of the Kingdom will be called out to fight them, without wages, as is the duty and privilege of free men. No more war-tax. As King I must sometimes be stern and ruthless; I must hang robbers, even though they rob only because they are hungry; I fear that Godwin and his sons sometimes do much worse things in my name. But for one good deed I shall be remembered by posterity. I shall be remembered as the only King in history who abolished a tax he could have collected, just because he did not need the money.’

  ‘Posterity will indeed be grateful, my lord,’ I said soothingly. I did not add that it is not so easy to abolish a tax as the King supposed, for that might have upset him and spoiled his sleep. In fact, though my holy master never again levied the war-tax, his Council insisted on putting on record the assessment, so that it might be collected again in an emergency; and as you all know it is now collected every year, whether in peace or war.

  The King said no more about the abolition of the tax. He had announced his will, and he was certain that it would be carried into effect. He very seldom interfered in the daily details of administration, leaving all such matters to his Council; which meant in practice to Earl Godwin. But when for once he did decide to make a change he was inflexible. He knew that the great Earl would be sorry to see the tax ended, but he also knew that it would never again be levied during his reign.

  The visible apparition of the Devil interested him much more than the tax; and rightly, for taxes are all about us but we seldom see their author, the Devil.

  ‘Now why do you think’, he continued, ‘that the Devil showed himself to me, while Hugolin the treasurer could not see him? It might be for one of two reasons. Either I am such a wicked King that the Devil is sure of me, and because he likes to pester any baptised Christian he chooses to give me a fright while I am still in this world; or my patron in Heaven, St. Peter the Prince of the Apostles, has the will as well as the power to send me a warning, so that I may mend my ways before it is too late. The second is a much more comforting explanation, isn’t it? I hope it is the right one.’

  ‘It must be right, my lord,’ I said eagerly. ‘For one thing, the Devil is no fool. He appears to wicked men as they lie dying, but he would not warn you of your errors while you still have time to repair them. Besides, you are not a wicked King. St. Peter is your patron. To save you from wrongdoing he has opened your eyes to the presence of the Devil, who of course finds himself at home in the treasury of every King.’

  ‘An empty treasury won’t be nearly so cosy for him. When that money has been spent he will go away. In the meantime I must tell the clerks that the treasury is an unchancy place, and that they must be sure they are in a state of grace while they work there. So we’ve decided, haven’t we, that St. Peter sent me that warning? Oh dear, that reminds me; I am getting deeper and deeper into his debt. Years ago, when I was frightened and miserable in Normandy, with no future after Duke Richard was dead and Danish assassins always on my track, I made a vow to St. Peter, and I have never paid it. I vowed that if ever I was given my rights as King of the English I would go to Rome in all my state, and pray at Peter’s tomb. Lots of my predecessors did it, from Egbert right down to Canute. But with the threat of invasion from Denmark always hanging over our heads I don’t see how I can leave this country. St. Peter won’t go on sending me these most helpful warnings unless I soon pay him his due.’

  ‘St. Peter does not demand the impossible, my lord. And he has left a representative on earth, who may act in his name. The next embassy you send to Rome should ask the Pope to commute your vow.’

  ‘That’s a very good idea. The Pope can fix things up for me. There! Now everything’s settled and I can go to sleep. The Devil may be squatting in my treasury, but that’s on the other side of the party-wall. I shall put my image of St. Peter over my bed as usual.’

  ‘One thing is still unsettled, my lord.’ I thought it better to warn the King of a trouble he was sure to meet in Council, rather than have him taken by surprise in the presence of all the magnates of England. ‘The war-tax pays for the regular navy. When the tax is gone how will your sailors be paid?’

  ‘My sailors will have to earn a living in some more honest fashion. If they are willing to plough I shall give them land; if they insist on cutting throats for a wage they must seek it from some other lord. Luckily the tax for this year has already been gathered, so they will have plenty of time to plan their future. My future is already plan
ned. For the next eight hours I shall be asleep.’

  At the next Council the King carried his point. The tax was suspended, and it was agreed to disband the regular navy. The King was inclined to be ruthless to professional fighting-men, whom he regarded as no better than hired killers; but they enjoyed the sympathy of the magnates, who saw that they were treated generously. Most of the sailors were given a full year’s notice to seek another lord (for of course none of them chose to earn their bread by sweating on the land); faithful veterans who had served in the wars of the great Canute were kept on for two years, by which time they were old enough to retire anyway. There were enough of these elderly warriors to man five ships and the King could just manage to pay them from his ordinary revenue. After these two years were up the last ships of the regular navy which had been founded by Canute, King of the North, were laid away to rot in deserted creeks.

  During this same stay at Winchester there was another incident in the treasury. The strongroom where the silver was lodged lay next to the King’s chamber, and now that we knew a Devil lodged in it also it was naturally never out of our thoughts. One day the King had a cold, and the weather was wet; so in the afternoon, instead of hunting, he lay down on his bed to rest until supper. For once I did not remain in the room with him. There was a pair of new hunting-boots to be oiled, and fish-oil has a nauseating stink; he told me to get on with the messy business in the open air. It was the middle of the day and the hall was full of guards, so I did as I was told. If there had been the slightest danger of assassination I would have disobeyed him, or at least sent for another chamberlain to take my place.

  I was criminally careless (and never again was the King left alone in his chamber). That morning Hugolin had opened the treasury to fetch silver to pay the housecarles; then the King returned to his chamber unexpectedly, and rather than keep him waiting while the door was barred and fastened the treasurer went away, leaving the strongroom open. There was no way into it save through the King’s chamber, and we all thought it safe enough.

  Presently the King rang a little handbell, as a signal that he wished to get up. I came in to dress him, and Hugolin followed me to close the treasury. First he looked inside, as he always did; and at once began to clamour that three sacks of silver were missing.

  ‘I saw the thief,’ he lamented. ‘In the hall I passed a stranger, and noticed that he was carrying a bag of the standard treasury pattern. I took it for granted that some rich housecarle was carrying home his pay untouched. What a fool I was! I saw the thief and let him go. But you, my lord, were not asleep all the time. Did you perhaps see him?’

  ‘Yes, I also saw him,’ said the King with a chuckle, ‘and I also let him go. If the treasury has been robbed I am to blame. He was such a miserable sooty little man, I suppose a scullion from the kitchen. He peeped through my door and saw the treasury open behind my bed. He tiptoed into my chamber, looking ludicrously frightened and ludicrously greedy at the same time. I nearly raised the alarm, and then I thought of what would happen to the poor frightened thief. Blind him, cut off his right hand, then turn him out to beg; that’s the penalty for robbing the treasury, isn’t it? And if I caught him in the act I should look silly if I pardoned him. But it’s all wrong that I should have a man hacked about so just for stealing from me; though I see that loyal servants who guard the possessions of their lord may have a different duty. So I decided to pardon him in advance, without telling anyone. I stuck my nose in my pillow and snored like a pig. The thief crept through my chamber, grabbed a bag of silver, and slunk out again. Then he came back for another load, and I thought that was going too far. It’s one thing for a starving pauper to help himself rather than die of hunger, and quite another for a greedy rascal to make a fortune out of one chance-opened door. Unfortunately it took me some time to make up my mind, and to think of a way of frightening him off without getting him arrested. On his third trip I called out to him, but only in a whisper: “You and I are safe here, but I hear Hugolin coming. Be off before he catches you.” He ran away as though the Devil were at his heels.’

  The King smiled happily. ‘As soon as that treasury is empty the Devil will leave it. Cheer up, Hugolin. Tell me frankly, is there still enough money for you?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. With care there will be just enough.’

  ‘And there is enough for me, because I can manage on very little. And there was enough for that thieving scullion, since he has not come back for more. Do you see, Hugolin? This is the richest treasury that ever was in Britain. It holds enough to content three greedy men. There’s glory for you. You may boast yourself the most prudent treasurer in the world. Don’t bother to chase that thief, though I hope the silly man remembers to call on a priest. He ought to know that he is in mortal sin. What a pity St. Peter didn’t allow him also to see the Devil. St. Peter has been very good to me, and I must not forget that I owe him a pilgrimage.’

  The next embassy to Rome obtained a commutation of the King’s vow of pilgrimage. In place of the long and arduous journey the King was commanded to build a great minster in honour of St. Peter. The change pleased everyone. Earl Godwin did not want the King to go abroad; and the King, though disappointed of an interesting tour, was happy to devote his energies to making the ancient and holy shrine of St. Peter at Westminster the most splendid foundation of modern times. I have already told of its miraculous consecration at the hands of St. Peter in person, so no place could have been more appropriate. It was handily situated, near London which the King visited every year. There was enough land and enough money, and when the time came there would be no difficulty in collecting enough devout monks.

  For the rest of his life the King’s main interest and hobby, after hunting, was the building of St. Peters at Westminster.

  4. The Fall of Earl Godwin

  Before the Christmas crownwearing of 1050 I was promoted to be the King’s cupbearer. King Edward was a jumpy, quick-tempered man who did not like strange faces near him, and I was one of his favourites. This was not because of any special virtue on my part; I was no more fitted than any other chamberlain to be the confidant of the sovereign. But in the first place I never asked favours. A bachelor and an orphan, I wanted no more than the good food and fine clothes which were my due so long as I remained in the royal household. Since I did not beg for landed estates for myself, or for benefices in the church for my kin, no other courtier was jealous of me; and the King himself was never compelled to deny me a boon and then look for something surly in my bearing. In the second place I had made a good beginning. Under the eye of a new page the King felt unpleasantly self-conscious; it so happened that I had met him for the first time when he was too excited by his raid on the Old Lady to have time to be shy. During that first anxious night at Winchester I had struck just the right note of deferential intimacy. He knew that he could say what he liked in my presence, and that though I would never betray his confidence I could give him a sensible answer if he sought it.

  King Edward would have preferred to go to the barrels and fill his own cup from the spigot, as he had done when he was a poor exile in Normandy. Since his position required that his cup should be filled by a servant in a fine livery he wanted to have a familiar figure at his elbow. My promotion meant that I was even more in my lord’s company; I could have easily made a fortune if I had been trying to make a fortune at all. It also meant very much more work. I still slept every night in the royal chamber, though other chamberlains now cared for the King’s clothes; and in the daytime I stood behind his chair when he sat in state at formal dinners and suppers.

  At most of these Councils the King took no greater part than his cupbearer. He would sit in his carved throne, his pale fingers caressing the untouched cup before him. His usual cup was a great aurochs-horn which had belonged to King Canute; its rim was of silver-gilt, and a gold band round the middle supported silver-gilt legs like those of a goat. Long ago a Varang had brought it to Denmark from Constantinople. But if politeness required t
hat he should drink many healths he would use a great cup of pure gold, chased with the image of St. Peter holding the keys; the small bowl above the elaborate foot held no more than an eggshell, and the King might drain it repeatedly without taking more wine than he cared for.

  Meanwhile great men would dispute hotly about the boundaries of their jurisdictions, or strike bargains about church preferment for their kin. The King would sit staring up into the rafters while the squabbles continued, only coming to life if someone mentioned hunting; and I also would stare into the rafters, holding a silver pitcher which probably would not be needed to refill the royal cup, no matter how long the feast might last. These long bickering Councils seemed to be a shocking waste of time; but, as the King once said to me, the bargains struck by the Earls would be even more shameless if the King were not present.

  Sometimes really important matters came up to be decided at these Councils, and then it could be seen that the King ruled the English. I remember especially the Easter Council of 1051, for it marked the beginning of the great struggle with Earl Godwin. The metropolitan See of Canterbury was vacant, and at this Council the next Archbishop must be chosen.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury is the second potentate in England, the King’s greatest subject. If he is to carry out his task as the King’s most trusted adviser he ought to know something of politics and administration, and of the other lands of Christendom. The Church in England, which has had so many ups and downs, also needs a holy and vigorous head. Because it is so difficult to choose a worthy Archbishop nobody wants Canterbury to be vacant again shortly after it has been filled; it is the custom to appoint a young and healthy clerk, who has the prospect of a long tenure. Knowing that in all probability another vacancy would not occur for some years, the magnates were anxious to choose someone who would fit easily into his place in the Council; but the King was all the more eager to choose someone who would enforce true discipline in the Church.