Stewart Binns - Anarchy

My friend, we are both getting old, in fact, very old. Indeed, it would not surprise me if we were the last of our generation at Cluny. I am seventy-six now; you, I think, are seventy-three. God has been good to us. But he has also smiled on a pompous fool who I am sure you know: Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

I met him last year when he arrived in London to consecrate a new church for the Knights Templars, built on the ancient site of an old Saxon settlement in Holborn. It has a beautiful circular nave that, I am told, reflects the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Templars’ mother church in Jerusalem. However, as much as Temple Church is charming, Heraclius is repellent. Self-serving, conniving and deceitful, he embodies all the ills that afflict our Church. It was his visit and the increasingly malign influence of the Templars in Church affairs that persuaded me to begin this lengthy correspondence with you. He was the final ingredient in a noxious concoction that has been under my nose for years. The stink has gone on long enough.

But there is another revealing story in what I will send you. It is a tale of two families: one high and mighty, but flawed; the other more lowly, but courageous and noble in sentiment. They have lived, and still do, parallel lives, each providing central characters in the dramas of England and Normandy.

I hesitated over the summer, but my declining health has finally prompted me to commit to record various accounts that you need to hear. Together, they represent a saga not only of England and Normandy, but also of Byzantium, the Holy Land and the Latin Princes. Needless to say, they tell us much about our human frailties, but also – thanks be to God – a little about our finer qualities.

My monks are now writing furiously, driven by my burgeoning desire to finish what I have begun. So, henceforth, these letters will arrive with you habitually; treat them with care, for they contain much that could be incendiary in the wrong hands. I will leave it to you to decide where they should ultimately rest; perhaps the Vatican Library would be the appropriate place. I will also send you some important artefacts in due course. These should also find a safe haven, secure from those who would exploit their value, both tangible and spiritual.

I will try not to meander too much, but it is a long story, told to me by a man who you will find intriguing. I first came across him in late June 1139, shortly after I was elected Abbot of Gloucester – so long ago, my friend, when I was in my prime. At the time, this first meeting seemed likely to be the only encounter between us, for he was badly wounded and near to death. He had been brought to me to hear his confession and for me to confer the last rites. As you well know, it is not unusual for us to be called on to hear the confession of dying warriors who, as death approaches, find their dubious deeds suddenly bearing heavily upon them. But this one was different, very different.

I guessed his age to be thirty-five, perhaps a little older. He was dark of hair and olive-skinned, but with piercing blue eyes, and he had the handsome countenance of a courtier. He sported the usual scars of battle, most of which were hidden by a full beard, and carried an impressive array of the tools of his trade – an assemblage of lustrous weapons as fine as I had ever seen – but around his neck was a most remarkable object, unlike anything I have seen before or since. The size of a small bird’s egg and not dissimilar in shape, it was a large piece of smooth amber, which glowed balefully in the candlelight. Astonishingly, when it was held to the light, it appeared to contain the image of Lucifer. He seemed to be surrounded by his familiars in the shape of small flies and insects. It also had a blood-red splash running through it, which at certain angles obscured the image of Satan.

I must confess it made me ill at ease. But I was determined to learn the identity of the man who wore what I feared was an evil charm. ‘Harold of Hereford’ was the name he gave me. I had heard it before, although I was not certain from where. Only over the coming months and years did the name become more and more familiar to me as the turmoil about to envelop England began to emerge. It has been called ‘The Anarchy’; the name is apt, because that is what soon came to pass. These were years of chaos and lawlessness, times I will never forget.

Miraculously, proving my physicians wrong, Harold of Hereford not only survived after leaving my cloisters at Gloucester, but went on to play a significant part in England’s future affairs. Eventually, he returned – but not for almost forty years, in 1176 in fact – and when he did, it was to make his peace with God. By then, Harold of Hereford was an old man, in his late seventies, and almost everyone who had lived through the turbulent years of his life was dead. I suppose it was a confession of sorts, but perhaps more of a declaration: a testimony about his life and his fascinating family, and an avowal of his destiny and England’s cause.

I remember the day well; it was a warm summer evening, the birds sang, and the insects hummed in the garden beneath my window. As I looked out, I saw him walk across the courtyard. My eyes were sharp then, a good ten years ago, and I could see that he stooped a little, but he still had the purposeful gait of a man of war. He had kept his hair and his beard was still full, but both were silver grey like a hoary frost on a winter’s morning. His weapons were as brightly burnished as I remembered them all those years before. I knew it was him, even after the passage of many years. I always thought that if he survived his injuries, one day he would return.

He spoke of my reputation as an honest prelate and flattered my abilities as a meticulous chronicler. With that, and without ever receiving my agreement that I would act as his scribe – he was the kind of man who assumed that all his requests would be routinely granted and all his needs immediately fulfilled – Harold of Hereford began his story.

Long hours turned into long days; then weeks passed, as his remarkable story unfolded in vivid detail. I have waited ten years to commit this to vellum, but now my own advancing years mean I can’t wait any longer. Fortunately, such is the drama of it, the story is as fresh in my memory now as it was then. I listened every day and he even accompanied me on my journeys to St Paul’s so that he could maintain the thread of his discourse. As a houseguest, he was charming and I came to realize that beneath his warrior’s gruff exterior, there was a man of great warmth and intellect. He began with his childhood and the astonishing circumstances of his birth and lineage. I sat to one side, as he stared out into my garden. His sun-burnished profile, deeply wrinkled but still handsome, broke into a smile. I smiled with him, sensing that what I was about to become privy to would be an illuminating and engaging revelation. I can still hear his melodious voice echoing in my memory.

My friend, forgive me for imposing this long correspondence on you, but I am too old to travel. It is now the dark of the moon here in Fulham. I fear that with the shorter days have come the first cold winds of the autumn. I am not looking forward to the winter; it can chill a man to his bones down here by the river, and the damp air’s icy fingers make breathing troublesome. Still, to the matter in hand.

I have made arrangements with my good friend, Henry of Chichester. He is Abbot of Waverley, a Cistercian house at Farnham, not far from here, that operates an excellent ecclesiastical courier service. He has agreed to make sure my correspondence arrives at the Vatican in Rome, which I know you visit every week. His messengers leave London frequently, and I hope the letters will reach you in regular batches.