Michael Jecks: The Prophecy of Death

There had been a dream given to St Thomas Becket while he was exiled in France. The Holy Virgin sent it to him, and in the dream she told him that there were to be six kings after his own. She showed him a marvellous Holy Oil, which he must keep safe, for the King who was anointed with it would be a lion among men: he would conquer large tracts of France once more, and throw the heathens from the Holy Land.

The oil had been secreted in a phial safe from danger, in St Cyprian’s Monastery in France. It was to be kept there, secure, concealed, until the coronation of the fifth King after Becket’s own king: Henry II. That meant it must be brought out now, for Edward II.

Even so, the King had not been anointed with the special oil. And King Edward II blamed all the misfortunes of his reign on that failure. The friar who had brought this matter to his attention was suddenly the King’s best companion. Anything the friar wanted must be provided. And all he had to do was help the King. He had sent Nicholas to the Pope, to tell the story and explain the importance of the oil. And to ask that a cardinal might be sent to anoint King Edward with the Holy Oil — the use of such a high-ranking cleric must give the oil additional potency.

But the pontiff had demurred, saying that any of the King’s bishops could perform the service. It was plain enough what his reasoning had been: the King was enormously unpopular already, and wasn’t aiding the Pope in his attempts to bring peace between the English and French kings, so why should he help Edward? The King was thwarted in this one act which could, so he believed, save his reign and bring him the fortune he deserved.

And the messenger who had brought this news? That friar was no longer the King’s favourite, of course. Failure was never rewarded in England.

But this matter of the oil. It was interesting, nonetheless. Richard gave a fleeting frown, patted his book again, and set it aside, but as he did so, his eyes narrowed and he wondered whether, just whether it was possible that the oil was genuine.

That would be a powerfully effective oil if it truly had been given to St Thomas by the Blessed Virgin.

Tuesday before Easter , 3 eighteenth year of the reign of King Edward II

Assart in Forest near Crowborough

Agnes set down the milk and leaned back, hands at the pain in the small of her back where the muscles were so tense, and then took up the butter-churn’s paddle and began the laborious work of converting the milk.

There was a time when she had been small and wisp-like, she remembered, but childbirth and the famine had stopped all that. When first she had been married, she had been a child, really. Only fourteen years old, and yet old enough to wed and conceive. She hadn’t needed too many muscles in those days. All she had known was some easy cookery, a few chores about the house, and then the grim effort of suckling her boy. And then the girl, too, and another boy.

The priest had been a great support at first. She told him about her vow when her father kicked up a fuss, and the priest listened to her and Matthew, and checked with all the witnesses to make sure, before declaring the marriage perfectly valid. After all, a marriage wasn’t something that was a Church matter. If people wanted the blessing of the priest at the church door, that was fine, but it didn’t invalidate the wedding if they chose not to have it. No, and so Agnes was married.

It was the famine that did for her, though. All the children starved during the winter of the second famine year. One after another, as though they couldn’t bear to stay alive amid so much sorrow. There was no food for anyone, but it was one thing to see men and women with their gaunt features and swollen bellies, their arms and legs withering, eyes sinking, teeth falling out, until only skeletons clothed with a thin layer of skin appeared to remain and another to see the children suffer.

All suffered, but families in the woods suffered more than most. Their scrappy land wouldn’t support much by way of crops in good years, and they must depend on the grain they could buy from those with better land. But during the famine, they lost their animals, for there was nothing for them to eat. The animals that could eat, succumbed to a murrain before long. All were dead. And with them Agnes and Matthew’s wealth.

Matthew had never been particularly demonstrative. He’d not taken to beating her before the famine. Only a couple of thrashings a week was his norm. But it had eroded her confidence even then. When Matthew’s father had roared at her for making his pottage too thin, too garlicky or too cold, Matthew had taken his side, and would slap her face to show his discontent. But that was nothing to the pain she endured when she must pay the marriage debt. After her third babe, it was unbearable, but he wouldn’t listen to her, and forced her to take him. That was why she grew to hate him. The routine manner of his beating her was one thing, but forcing her to open her legs each night when it felt as though there was a dagger in her belly already, made her despise him.

The sound of hooves came clearly, and she leaned on the paddle, listening, before continuing with her work again, the paddle thudding more heavily as the cream began to separate into buttermilk and butter.

‘Maid, you look good enough to eat!’

She turned and felt her face break into a broad smile. ‘Richard!’

The King’s herald grinned and opened his arms, and it was then that she heard her husband’s roar, and she saw him hurtling towards them with a billhook in his fist, and she screamed as it rose and sliced down at Richard’s head.

Monday following Easter in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Edward II 4

Eltham Palace

He was not yet thirteen years old, but he could still remember the horror of those days. Three years had passed, but he would never forget them. Not if he lived to be a hundred.

At first he had been confused. Only a boy, he had grown to appreciate the men of his household, great men, good men, who were entirely trusted. Knights, squires, even lords, had been his companions all his life, and he admired them, all of them. Everyone did. They were the pinnacle of nobility.

Many great men lived in his own private household: Damory, Audley, Macauley — they were the men he could look up to. Other than the King, they were the men he respected most in the world.

But his world was about to collapse about him.

It was no sudden shock. He knew that now, but to a lad of only nine and a half years it had come with the vast speed of a river in spate, washing away all before it. He had listened in horror to the tales of death and torture with utter incomprehension. In truth, the catastrophe was a long time building, had he but known it. But he was so young when the civil war began, he couldn’t see that this was a ponderous disaster that had been constructed on the foundations of hatred over ten years — before his birth. It was the result of the King’s capricious nature. King Edward II had long resented the attitude of the men who thwarted his whims. To the King’s mind, he had the inalienable right of the Crown. God had made him King. None other. So no man had the right to overrule him. There was no one with the right to stand against him, and yet many tried.

The first rebellion, so the King said, was when his close friend Piers Gaveston was captured and murdered by the earls of Hereford, Lancaster and Warwick. Gaveston had been the recipient of too much of the King’s largesse, and the earls resented royal generosity at the expense of others who had more noble birth. So they took the King’s adviser and killed him.