Edward Marston - The Serpents of Harbledown

Scattered copses thickened into woodland before giving way to pasture and stream. Canon Hubert pointed with almost childlike glee at the hill which came into view in the middle distance. It rose sharply toward a straggle of thatched cottages. Nestled cosily into the hillside, like a cat in a basket, was a small stone church with a steep roof and windows with rounded arches. Wattle huts were clustered below it in a crude semicircle.

“Harbledown!” announced Hubert. “That must be the leper hospital of St. Nicholas, built by the archbishop to care for the diseased and the dying.”

“A truly Christian deed,” remarked Simon.

“Poor wretches!” murmured Gervase.

“They are all God’s creatures,” said Hubert with brusque compassion. “Lanfranc has opened his arms wide to embrace them.”

He feasted his eyes on the scene. Buttered by the sun and stroked by the soft fingers of a light breeze, Harbledown looked tranquil and innocuous. The little church with its makeshift dwellings was a private world, a self-contained community with a charitable purpose. The hospital of St. Nicholas seemed completely at ease with itself. As they rode up the incline, the newcomers had no idea of the sorrow and the turbulence within it.

Alwin was inconsolable. As he lay facedown in the nave, he twitched violently and beat his forehead hard against the stone-flagged floor. It was all that Brother Martin and Brother Bartholomew could do to prevent him from dashing out his brains.

They clung to the tortured body as it threshed about with renewed wildness. Alwin would not be subdued.

“Peace, peace, my son!” urged Martin. “Desist!”

“Remember where you are,” added Bartholomew sternly. “This is the house of God. Show due reverence.”

“Bertha would not have wanted this, Alwin.”

“Think of your daughter, man.”

“Put her needs first.”

“Spare yourself this rude assault.”

“It will not bring her back.”

“Hold, Alwin!”

The grieving father suddenly went limp in their arms. They rolled him over on his back and saw the blood streaming down his face from the self-inflicted wounds on his brow. At first, they thought he might have expired, and frantically sought to revive him, but he was only gathering his strength for a long, loud, heartrending howl of anguish.

“BERTHA!”

The cry brought him up into a sitting position and he saw his daughter not five yards away. It set him off into a fresh paroxysm and the two monks wrestled with him once more. The dead girl lay beneath a shroud on the cold and unforgiving stone. Rough hands had carried her into the church with astonishing gentleness. A boy had been sent to the nearest farm to beg the loan of a cart so that Bertha might make the grisly journey down to Canterbury with a modicum of comfort and dignity.

The search party had dispersed and gone its separate ways.

There were souls to cure and pigs to herd. Only Brother Martin and Brother Bartholomew remained to struggle with Alwin. Both monks were now panting stertorously.

“In God’s name, I beg you-stop!” gasped Martin.

“Mourn your child with decency!” said Bartholomew.

“This is unseemly, Alwin!”

“Madness!”

“Calm down, my son.”

“I want to die,” hissed Alwin. “Leave me be.”

“No!”

“I have nothing to live for, Brother Martin.”

“But you have.”

“Let me go. Let me follow my daughter.”

“We will not!”

“No,” added Bartholomew, tightening his grip. “To take one’s own life is a sin. To commit such a sin before the altar is an act of blasphemy. You will not follow Bertha this way. While she has a Christian burial, you will lie in unconsecrated ground. While she soars to heaven, you will sink into the pit of Hell. You will spend eternity apart from her.”

“Is that what you want?” challenged Martin.

“Think, Alwin. Think .”

Alwin stopped trying to fling them off. Gleaming with sweat and dripping with blood, he sat on the floor and took the measure of their words. The impulse of self-destruction which had overwhelmed him now weakened beneath the power of reason and the fear of consequences. What would be gained? What purpose would be served? Would his gruesome death really be a suitable epitaph for his daughter?

He allowed himself to be soothed by their kindness and persuaded by their argument. When Brother Martin fetched water to bathe his wounds, Alwin did not complain. When Brother Bartholomew helped him to stand up, he did not resist. The fire in his veins had burned itself out and a cold dread had settled upon him.

Alwin looked down sadly at the body of his daughter. The shroud concealed her but the marks of doom on her neck were a vivid memory. She had left the world in agony.

“This is a judgement upon me,” he said.

“No,” insisted Martin. “This was not your doing. Bertha was called to God. Only He knows why.”

The father made his simple confession before the altar.

“I killed her,” he affirmed. “In a sense I killed my own daughter.”

The weary travellers conspired in their own deception. They were so relieved to see their destination at last that they invested it with qualities that were largely illusory. Viewed from the hilltop, Canterbury appeared to them to be a golden city, its great cathedral of white stone dominating the prospect with massive towers at the west end, topped by gilded pinnacles, and a central tower at the junction of nave and choir that was surmounted by a shimmering seraph. The adjoining priory, with the same arresting style and the same generous proportions, reinforced the sense of magnificence and authority commensurate with the headquarters of the English Church.

Shops, houses and civic buildings clutched at the hem of the cathedral precinct like children around their mother’s skirt. Small churches served the outer wards. On the glistening back of the River Stour, mills had been built to make use of its swift passage through the city. A high wall enclosed the whole community with solid reassurance. Outside the ramparts, the newly built rotunda of St. Augustine’s Abbey displayed a gleaming whiteness.

Canterbury seemed to throb with religiosity.

Canon Hubert was transfigured. His bulbous heels kicked more life into the donkey and it went scurrying down the hill with its precarious cargo. The rest of the cavalcade followed at a more sedate pace. After passing the church of St. Dunstan, they rode on to Westgate, went under the cross above it and entered Canterbury. Disenchantment set in at once.

Its rowdy populace encumbered them, its haphazard streets confused them, its filth disgusted them and its stench invaded their nostrils with a suddenness that took them unawares. They quickly understood why Lanfranc had broken with archiepiscopal tradition and built his home outside the city in the cleaner air of Harbledown.

Canterbury was a dirty, smelly, boisterous place which made few concessions to order and tidiness. Luxury was cheek by jowl with squalor. Fine new houses stood beside the charred remains of old ones. The neat little church of St. Peter was surrounded by beggars. The bridge at the King’s Mill was littered with offal.

Knights and their ladies wore bright apparel among the dull homespun of most citizens. Market stalls were laden with food while skeletal urchins searched the ground for scraps.

Ralph Delchard observed it all with a mixture of curiosity and disappointment. There was a pervasive air of neglect and decay.

The majestic cathedral was a pounding heart in a rotting body.

Gazing at its stark contrasts, Ralph was struck by the thought that Canterbury had not yet fully accepted the Conquest. After twenty years, it still reflected an uneasy and unconsummated marriage between Norman power and Saxon resentment. The thought made Ralph slip an involuntary arm around Golde’s waist.