Читать книгу The Magnificient Century: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 5

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When word came that the heir to the throne, John’s nine-year-old son Henry, was being brought by his mother from the doubly stockaded castle of Devizes where the King had left him, William the Marshal rode out to meet them. The latter was drawing close to the end of his days and knew it quite well, and it was in his mind that this would be his last official act. He wanted to spend the few years left him in the company of his children and his young wife, who had been the heiress of Pembroke and had made him a faithful and loving companion in spite of the disparity in their years. He was filled with a fiercely intense longing for the peace of Pembroke Castle, which looked across the waters at Milford Haven, and the easy life of his extensive Irish estates, where a gentle sun came out between showers and everything was lovely and green. The incomparable old knight had fallen into the habit of claiming eighty years. Actually he was seventy-two; a long time to spend in fighting; in the Crusades, in the continuous wars, in the five hundred tournaments which he had won without a single upset.

The desire for comfort which comes with the years had caused him to discard his armor, and he wore instead a padded and gaily colored tabard, which was especially designed for use ahorse, being split on both sides from the armpits down. It was habit perhaps which had induced him to keep under his hat of soft cloth a coif de fer, the skullcap of steel which knights wore beneath their helmets. His bearing was still martial and, when the plains were reached from which a glimpse could be had against the sky line of the bell tower of the Abbey of Malmesbury, his eyes were keen enough to catch the first sight of the royal party in the distance.

As soon as she heard of her husband’s death Queen Isabella had ridden from Exeter to Devizes to get the youthful heir. She had not been allowed any active part in public affairs while John was alive, but she was to display in every phase of her life from this point on both ambition and energy and, certainly, a taste for mischief. She was riding beside Henry when the two parties met on the plains outside Malmesbury and, despite the interest felt in the new King, it was on the lovely Isabella that each eye rested first. It was customary for ladies of high rank in France to don white for mourning, but those of royal blood were allowed a license in the matter of color and were prone to use black trimmed with yellow or ermine. It is probable, therefore, that Isabella was in black when she met the old marshal; it is certain that she was beautiful to behold, being in her early thirties and at the height of her dazzling charm. She was slender and, as she had stripped off her gloves and tucked them in her belt in the style of the moment, it could be seen that her hands were small and white.

The young prince was riding on the front of the saddle of an old retainer, Ralf of Saint-Samson. The marshal dismounted and went down on one knee.

“Welcome, sir,” piped Henry in a high, boyish voice. “I commit myself to God and to you. May God give you grace to guard us well.”

It was well spoken. Perhaps he had been rehearsed in what he was to say by his mother or his tutor, Philip d’Aubigny. More likely, however, the salutation was his own thought, for even as a boy Henry had persuasiveness and tact. He had as well the golden hair of the Plantagenets and his mother’s high coloring and he was altogether a handsome lad with one physical flaw only, a tendency in one eyelid to droop. William the Marshal was delighted with his good looks and the gentility of his manner, happy to find him so polite and so very unlike the raucous, cruel, tricky, whisker-twitching youth his father had been; a sweet prince indeed to offer the people of England.

“Sire,” said the marshal with tears streaming down his seamed and sunken cheeks, “on my soul I will do everything to serve you in good faith as long as I have the strength.”

Everyone wept at this, the young prince loudly, the old warrior with the sadness which the sight of youth can induce in the aged, the beautiful Queen with well-bred restraint, the knights in both trains, and the servants who brought up the rear.

Realizing the need for haste, they then fell into line and set out at a sharp pace for Gloucester. Most of the advisers of the late King were there when the royal party arrived. It was decided that, in spite of the difficulties which stood in the way of a proper coronation, the boy should be crowned without any delay. The difficulties were technical and yet of the kind to cause serious trouble later. Westminster Abbey was in the hands of the enemy. Stephen Langton, who alone had the right to officiate, was still in Rome, a virtual prisoner of the Vatican. The crown had been swept out to sea with all the royal regalia when the waters of the Wash had engulfed the wagons in John’s train. It was decided under the circumstances to give the crowning a preliminary character, with an eye to a more regular and properly imposing ceremony later.

First, however, the prince had to be knighted, and it was agreed that the old marshal, who had performed the service for King John, should officiate. The coronation which followed was the least pretentious of all, being held in the presence of a small group of bishops and earls instead of an assembly of all the great men of the kingdom in their finest robes and glittering jewels. Perhaps the meager nature of it had some effect on the mind of the boy King and led to the extravagances in which he indulged himself ever after. It may well have been that the memory of the anxious-faced group which shared the plain coronation banquet incited him to the great feasts of his later years; for which hundreds of cattle would be slaughtered and fast-driven carts would come from the seaports with the lampreys for which he developed an insatiable appetite and the plaice and turbot which would be properly calvered for the guests; and which moreover always drained the royal purse. Certainly Henry seemed obsessed with a desire to conduct himself on all public occasions in a most lavish manner.

The crowning was on October 28, one of the most exciting days in the history of the ancient Roman city of Gloucester. Now that John was dead, the people had turned fiercely royalist and wanted to see the French interlopers swept into the sea. They crowded into the old church which good Abbot Serlo had built, and those who could not find places inside the nave with its tall fire-blackened pillars filled the streets for a glimpse of the pretty little Plantagenet. They dissolved into joyous tears when the boy’s voice was heard repeating the words of the oath.

The ceremony was carried out, in fact, with every evidence of rejoicing. The prince, who conducted himself with rare dignity, was anointed and crowned by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, about whom much will be told later. A plain gold circlet, supplied by the Queen Mother, was placed on the head of the third Henry in place of the proper crown, which would never be recovered from the shifting mud of the Wash. In recognition of the irregularity of the proceedings, the ceremony did not include unction or the imposition of hands. An edict was issued immediately, however, that for a month no adult should appear in public without a chaplet on the head in honor of the new King; a command which the people obeyed with enthusiasm.