Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

'Two pints of mulled winter ale, Bess, in pewter, if you please, and a couple of dozen oysters from the barrel that arrived today. Get Peter to bring it to the fire for us.' And he pushes me in front of him towards the big fireplace with its large inglenook, a bench and a three-legged table. 'At least we'll be warm here. The cold really gets to me, especially in the hip.' And pulling up his robe to reveal his knees he spreads them towards the fire and his hands above them. His spectacles flash with the flames.

'Where are you from, then?' he asks.

There seems no reason to lie. 'From Bharatavarsha,' I say, giving the Sanskrit name, 'which you generally call India, I believe.'

'Really? Now refresh my memory. Which side of Africa is that?'

'The further side.'

'Ah. And what brings you to this end of the world?'

Not an easy question to answer. To say that I am seeking wisdom when I have left the land that is the fount of all wisdom would invite ridicule from this clearly cultivated gentleman. Fortunately we are interrupted by the arrival of our comestibles.

The oysters are excellent, already opened for us so all we have to do is toss them into our mouths from their glowing nacreous shells, which are thinner and more round than the ones we pick up from the Malabar coast, and more delicately flavoured. The ale-is dark, rich, fruity in flavour, and, perhaps because it is served hot, very quick in its intoxicating action. A small wild apple bobs against the rim.

'Your show,' I comment, 'was about the Normans. The people who rule you.'

His glasses flash at me, seriously, knowingly. 'Bastards! No, not really. It's about Harold. Good bloke, but unlucky.'

'The arrow in the eye?'

'Of course… he loses. And William becomes king and the Normans lake over. Bastards,' he repeats.

'Are they really so different, the Normans and the rest?'

He leans towards me and puts his hand on my knee. 'Yes,' he says. 'They've never fitted in, in spite of marrying Danes and Saxons, which they were bound to do since they brought few women of their own with them. Their kings married into the Prankish Angevins, who call themselves Planta-Genet after the branch of broom their founder wore in his helmet…'

The name stirs up sand from the bottom of my mind, the way a shrimp at the bottom of a rock-pool does, but I couldn't place it. Geoff went on, '… and it's only in the last sixty years after nearly four hundred, that they've even bothered to learn Inglysshe. They're not properly English at all, stiff-necked, proud, formal, obsessed with form, order and rank.'

I remembered how, at Calais, Warwick and the rest had treated Wydville with contempt because he was no Norman. Geoff went on: 'They are clannish, and they love sports but the more warlike the better. Those who do not have the inclination or the physique go into the Church and are made bishops. But while their relations with each other may be easy they remain arrogant to outsiders.'

'What about their women?" I ask.

'Obsessed with their men. They serve them like slaves, marry-as they are told to, bear children as regularly as cows calve, and are even more concerned than the men with status and the trappings of status.'

'So what are the real Inglysshe like?'

'There are two sorts, those who collaborated and those who did not. Those who did are servile and obedient, content to do anything for a quiet life so long as they are not starving. You see, the Normans had a problem. They had to recruit clerks, officials, sheriffs, constables, customs officers and the like to run the country. And provided they behaved the Normans were happy to let the Saxons do this work.'

He sighs, continues, 'These people, these collaborators, developed a finicky sense of neatness, correctness, to please their masters. They accept the Normans as their lords by right and tradition, and will do anything to please them, showing forelock-tugging deference at all times and aping Norman manners. Usually it was the Saxons who collaborated. The Danes are more independent. But both races shared a way of life, before lead-coloured tankard to his lips, gives it a shake. I look round and see the boy who brought us our drink and oysters at my shoulder and I order two more pints. This time I pay for them.

When he's ready to go on it is in a tone more speculative than before, as if he were thinking through what he had to say for the first time.

'In the old days both Saxons and Danes governed themselves through village moots or meetings. Even the King was governed by the biggest moot of all, the Witangemot. Ami although most of these privileges were taken away or driven underground the spirit that lay behind them survived.'

'And imbues the second strand in the Inglysshe?' I guess.

'Yes, indeed. Under our outer robes of conformity we are fiercely independent, and respect each other's individuality. We can work hard when it suits us, but we'd rather drink, dance, and muck about. And there'd be a lot more of that than there is if our Harold had won that damned battle…' And he sways a little on the bench, wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. 'Merry Ingerlond,' he says. 'That's what we lost.'

'Geoff. Geoff? Come on, now.' I look up and see his wife Jenny smiling down at us.

'Hello, my dear.' Geoff sits up with a start, suddenly recovered. 'Just telling this young feller about the Inglysshe and so forth. He's from India. Fascinating place. Perhaps we could knock up a shadow-play based on his experiences… Call it, let me see, Far Flung Places?? Sit down, dear, have a bite and a drink, see what you think.'

And he gives me a big wink, which I am sure she sees, for she, too, gives me a secret little moue before squeezing in next to him.

Coventry. Again I keep to the countryside to avoid the dangers of the road, and it takes me a day and a half to get there. I must confess, too, that I had a bad night sleeping in the stabling of that Banbury tavern. I had to share the straw, pretending to be a man amongst several others in the way of ostlers and grooms. I had drunk a gallon of ale by the time the Reeves departed, which had to be disposed of and it was not easy to maintain the pretence while pissing next to a man similarly engaged. And then the oysters. Never eat shellfish unless you can see the sea is a good rule, and always open them yourself It only needs one bad one, and one bad one there must have been. No doubt the heat of the fire and the numbness induced by the ale disguised its presence…

The result is that I came upon the city at around midday when I might have been there the evening before. The first thing one sees, and that from a considerable distance, is the spire of its cathedral, which soars to a needlepoint out of the smoke and murk that fill the air above the city roofs. Next, and quite clearly seen, since the town is built on a low eminence above the fields and commons around it, is a vast shanty-town outside the city walls. Since London has proved hostile to the royal faction, the King, or rather his Queen, has made this city, in the very centre of the island, her capital and principal seat of government, calling Parliament to meet here, and bringing in the whole apparatus by which the nation is ruled.

In its train this has brought many thousands of hangers-on, mostly people who have no visible means of support, as out-of-work artisans, entertainers, tinkers, gypsies, prostitutes, unfrocked clerics, unattached professional soldiers, horse-dealers and then the people who would supply this crowd with victuals and drink, especially the strong drink the Inglysshe love so much. Now, in a town the size of London such a crowd can be accommodated, and even employment found for many, but what was a relatively small place of perhaps no more than five thousand souls is swamped, law and order and all the other services break down, and the whole place is enclosed by a human jungle, like a well-formed egg-yolk within a sloppy white.