Silk and stone, p.1
Silk and Stone, page 1
SILK AND STONE
DINAH DEAN
Copyright © 1990 by Dinah Dean
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This 2023 edition published by Cover & Page.
Foreword
This is a vintage book reissued by Cover & Page.
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However, we also appreciate that these books were written and published in a different era and reflect the attitudes of the author at that time. While we have lightly edited this book to suit modern tastes, there may remain attitudes and phrases that may cause offence. These may include, but are not limited to, racial, gender, sexual, ability, religious, age, class, political, and national stereotypes.
Publication by Cover & Page does not imply endorsement of any content therein.
For Barbara, Daphne, Hu and Peter
Contents
Author’s Note
Antescriptum
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Postscriptum
Afterword
Also by Dinah Dean
Author’s Note
Many of the characters in this book were real people, and many of the incidents described actually happened. They are taken from a chronicle written some forty years later by the lad called here ‘the seventh thurifer’, whose real name we do not know. Two copies of the chronicle survive in the British Museum’s Harleian collection of manuscripts under the title Tractatus de inventione Sancte Crucis nostre.
Being no Latinist, I am indebted to Dr K N Bascombe, Mr F Baker and Dr L Watkiss for the use of their translations of the manuscripts, and apologize to them and the chronicler for the liberties I have taken with the time-scale and with the account of Matthew’s miracle.
The ‘real’ people include, beside the seventh thurifer, Lady Mabilia, Sir Richard (who later became the Master of the English Templars), Matthew, Crispin (who had two unnamed sisters), all the named canons, Lukin Dulpain, Matilda Mayngod, Robert of St Albans, Alvin Bisemare, Humphrey de Barenton, and, of course, those better-known characters, Henry of Blois, Robert of Gloucester, the Empress Matilda, Geoffrey de Mandeville and Gilbert de Montfichet.
The nave of Waltham minster still stands, a very fine and active parish church, and masons like William of Norwich and his lodge are working on the fabric even now, restoring the wear and tear of eight and a half centuries, at a cost which would have frightened Bishop Henry’s Chancellor out of his wits!
Antescriptum
The bridge of the Holy Angel was crowded with people, a human river flowing across the Tiber towards the basilica of St Peter. There were pilgrims, dusty-clothed and shabby after weeks of travelling from far countries to visit the shrine of the Apostle, mingling with citizens of all levels of Roman society, from wealthy merchants with their plump wives and children to ragged beggars from the poorest back streets, all perforce afoot where no horses or carts were allowed.
Most of the pilgrims stared about them, agog at the ruined splendours of the second most holy city of their faith, and the citizens eyed the pilgrims speculatively, wondering whence they had come, what news or diseases they brought, and, most importantly, what money they carried. Those pilgrims who were not staring at the great castle before them, or at the roof of the basilica, just visible to their left over the crumbling city wall, were praying, their eyes on the ground or the heels of the person before them, while the citizens gossiped among themselves, the wealthy covertly inspecting the Sunday finery of the other wealthy, and the poor, shuffling among them, thrust aside by their betters, wondering if they would even be allowed inside the basilica to hear the Holy Father celebrate Mass.
Amidst this varied throng, one group stood out particularly and attracted much interest, not all of it friendly or approving. There were twelve men-at-arms wearing faded black cloaks over their mailcoats, looking much alike with the nasals of their round helmets obscuring their faces, marching along two by two, led by a tall knight in a white cloak whose stride was so purposeful and unhesitating that he seemed to cut through the slow-moving crowd like the prow of a ship. Between him and his followers were three women, plainly dressed and veiled, but in cloth of excellent quality, who had to hurry to keep up with him.
‘Templars!’ said a bad-tempered-looking priest to his companion. ‘Disgraceful! Armed men pretending to be monks, carrying arms and shedding blood under the excuse that they fight for Our Lord, and all with the Holy Father’s blessing. It’s not right, I tell you, whether the Holy Father and Bernard of Clairvaux favour them or not.’
‘But surely they only fight the heathen in the Holy Land and protect the pilgrims?’ his companion protested gently. ‘Someone has to protect the Christian kingdoms in Outremer, or the heathen will overrun them and degrade the Holy Places.’
‘Then let laymen do it!’ the first priest snapped. ‘Fighting men are evil, whoever they fight. In any case, look at them — they boast that they keep their threefold vows better than monks, yet here they are, flaunting their women in public. Disgraceful, I call it, and I don’t care who hears me!’
Elys de Wix heard him as she hurried along in the wake of her uncle, sandwiched between her mother, Lady Mabilia and Maud, her mother’s gentlewoman. The latter had flinched away from the crowd so much that she was pressed against Elys’ side and had already tripped them both twice in crossing the bridge. Elys gathered from the priest’s glare when she glanced back at him that he disapproved, but she had not sufficient command of Italian to understand what he said.
The bridge debouched through a gateway into an open space within the walls of the castle, and the road then turned to the left and passed through another gate into the piazza before the facade of St Peter’s. The crowd, like wine released from a bottle, flowed out across the wide area and slowed its pace, no longer pressed on by those behind, but the Templar knight, Sir Richard de Hastings, strode on more swiftly, and his followers quickened their pace to keep up. Almost before Elys had time to look at the basilica, they were climbing the steps and slowing down again as the flood of people entered another bottleneck, the great triple-arched entrance, which was high but not wide enough for all those who wished to pass through.
Sir Richard seemed to have no difficulty in forging through the press, spear-heading the way for his followers, and Elys soon found herself entering, not the basilica, as she had expected, but a garden, paved and set about with tubs of small trees and flowers and made cool and pleasant by the tinkling of several little fountains. Five paths crossed this atrium, and Sir Richard headed unhesitatingly along the widest, the middle one, towards the central of the five doors of the basilica beyond.
The doors were guarded discreetly by dark-clad men, not visibly armed, who directed most would-be worshippers to the smaller doors into the double aisles, but they bowed slightly as Sir Richard approached, and waved him and his companions on into the nave.
The interior was surprisingly quiet after the hubbub outside, for people seemed to fall silent as they entered, and very dark after the bright sunlight, but as she advanced up the centre of the long nave, Elys was gradually able to see that the building was long in proportion to its width, and the nave rose to a considerable height. Eleven small windows were set in each wall, right up under the roof, so that most of the light they admitted fell on the roof timbers, and little reached ground level. The side aisles were very dark indeed, and did not appear to have any windows, but it was just possible to see that they were crowded with people, pushing their way further in and spilling out into the nave, only to be waved back again into the aisles by more of the dark-clad guards, who were preserving the rather less-crowded central area for important folk.
Her eyes drawn back to the light, Elys looked up again, and saw that the walls around and below the windows were painted with worn and faded pictures, presumably of saints and biblical scenes, and she glanced quickly along one side, trying to catch a glimpse of something clear enough for her to make out its subject. This led her eyes westwards, to the great arch at the far end of the nave, and she caught her breath. Here was a picture she could see clearly, for the whole area of the wall above the arch was filled by a vivid mosaic, sparkling as the light from the windows caught the golden tesserae in its background. In the centre was the figure of Christ enthroned, many times greater than life-sized, and on either side and a little below, two figures stood in attitudes of worship. One, who carried two keys, was clearly St Peter, and the other, who was robed and crowned and carried a model of the basilica, must be the Emperor Constantine.
Sir Richard stopped and turned suddenly, impatiently beckoning the three women forward, and Elys was able to see what had been hidden until now by his broad back. Beyond the great arch with its mosaic was a blaze of light, coming from the top of a golden canopy, which rose to a peak to support a gilded crown, and was surrounded by a mass of golden lamps, each shaped like a dolphin and burning much more brightly than a candle. The canopy was supported by six white stone columns, the shaft of each inlaid with gold in spirals, wave-patterns or diamonds. Within the shelter of the canopy was the altar, raised high on a dais and approached by a double flight of steps, between which was an opening, as if more steps went down to a level below the altar.
‘Stay close at hand,’ Sir Richard said quietly, gesturing the three women towards the north side of the narrow central path of dark marble.
Elys hesitated, thinking that he was sending them the wrong way, then recollected that this was one of the very old churches they had found where the altar was at the west end. Lady Mabilia took her stance near to the central path and Elys steered Maud past her to stand close alongside, while the Templars formed themselves up two deep on the men’s side of the path, beside Sir Richard, who fixed his eyes firmly on the altar and ignored everything else.
Elys had visited so many churches in the past few years that she knew something of the layout of a basilican church, and craned her neck a little to see if there was an apse behind the altar. She saw that there was, and it contained a seat for the celebrant, though only a low one, not a bishop’s throne, for this was not a cathedral. At that point, her mother’s elbow in her ribs reminded her to concentrate on her prayers, and she closed her eyes obediently, feeling a surge of excitement that at last they had reached the goal of their pilgrimage, the longest and most difficult that they had undertaken, and, please God, the final, successful one.
Silence fell in the crowded church, broken only by the quickly-hushed cry of a child, the rustle of the silk gown of a rich woman nearby, and the scuff of leather shoes on the marble floor as people shifted their weight or edged to a better position for a view of the altar.
Presently, a murmur ran through the crowd — a whisper that the Holy Father had arrived from his palace in the Lateran — and died again into silence. A brief pause, and then the sound of chanting voices, seeming disembodied, which re-echoed in the stone vault of the transept as the choirs entered from either end of it and moved to their positions on each side of the railed sanctuary.
Elys did not see the Holy Father enter, but suddenly he was there, a tall, lean figure, glowing in a robe of cloth of gold and wearing a white cap set within a golden crown, quite unlike any mitre she had ever seen.
The magnificence of the setting, the brilliant light of the dozens of lamps, the gleaming gold, the stiff hieratic movements of the priests and acolytes, made the Mass seem strangely remote and unfamiliar to Elys, who found herself wishing that they were back home in England, hearing Mass in some ordinary little church with a few candles and a priest in a simple alb. This was too magnificent, too overpowering, and a swift glance about her showed that the nave was filled with prosperous, well-dressed people. Where were the poor ragged folk she had seen outside? Relegated to the dark aisles, to the back of the church, perhaps even still outside. . .
After Mass, Sir Richard dismissed his men to wait outside in the atrium, and joined his womenfolk as the basilica slowly emptied. Presently, a priest came to engage him in a whispered conversation, and Elys guessed, from the few words she caught and the gestures of the priest, that he was establishing Sir Richard’s identity, and enquiring why he had brought females with him. They were speaking French.
‘My sister and niece,’ she heard Sir Richard reply, ignoring the poor gentlewoman, as most people did, then a further exchange which she could not hear, followed by an indignant ‘Certainly not! I consulted our Chapter, and they approved unanimously. Is it not among our duties to protect pilgrims?’
The priest raised his hands in a placating gesture, bowed slightly, and said, ‘Perfectly in order, my lord. You will wish to pray at the shrine, and then I will conduct you to His Holiness. Please take as long as you need. I will wait here.’
‘A chaplain to the Holy Father,’ Sir Richard whispered to his sister. ‘Speaks good French, but with a Provencal accent. Come along now, don’t dawdle. I can’t keep the Holy Father waiting.’
He led the way into the sanctuary, where an acolyte sprang to open the gate in the railing for them to pass, and they descended the steps to a small space below the front of the altar. There was barely room for four people, so Maud drew back without waiting to be told, and waited humbly, peering between the others to catch a glimpse of the shrine.
‘Is the Holy Apostle in there?’ asked Lady Mabilia nervously.
‘Yes,’ Sir Richard replied crisply, stepping forward to lay both his hands flat against the marble wall which was set back a foot or two under the dais on which the altar stood, and was framed between the two columns that supported the heavy stone structure above.
Elys, feeling awed and ashamed of her own lack of saintly qualities, went to stand beside her uncle, placing her hands as he had done. The wall was white marble, veined with blue, and narrow bands of purple porphyry were set into it for ornament. It was cool, like any marble, and she felt a slight disappointment. This was the tomb of St Peter, the Apostle, a man who had known Our Lord, had spoken with Him, touched Him, lived and worked with Him, day by day, through many months. Of all the shrines she had visited, this was the most important, the only one of a saint who had actually seen Our Lord in the flesh, but it felt like any other shrine.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she told herself. ‘How else would it feel? It’s only marble. The relics are behind it, and St Peter himself is in Heaven.’ She closed her eyes and concentrated on her prayers, asking the Apostle’s intercession for poor, dear Matthew, for her mother and uncle, for her other brother and her sister, far away in England, and, with a prick of guilt, for Maud, the gentlewoman. Then she quietly moved back and let the poor woman take her place.
‘Well, then,’ said Sir Richard briskly when they had finished praying and left the sanctuary, ‘I have an audience with the Holy Father now, and you may go back to our lodging. My sergeant and two others will escort you.’
‘You won’t forget to ask him to pray for Matthew. . .’ Lady Mabilia said, catching his arm as he turned away.
‘Of course not, but my audience with him concerns the affairs of the Temple, not personal matters. I'll endeavour to find an opportunity to mention Matthew — I think it would be justifiable, as he means to join the Order when he’s healed.’
‘I shall go to the Cathedral before we return to our lodging,’ Lady Mabilia said pensively. ‘St Paul is there, and St Peter’s head. . .’
‘As you please, but you’ve prayed at St John’s three times, and climbed the Holy Stair on your knees twice. There seems little point in doing the same thing repeatedly,’ Sir Richard said practically. ‘You’d do better to pack your boxes and rest. We start for home tomorrow.’
‘So soon?’ Elys protested. ‘But we’ve hardly seen anything of the city!’
‘You've done what you came to do, and there’s no other reason for your being here,’ Sir Richard snapped. ‘I shall finish my business today, and I must return home. I'll remind you that England is in a state of civil war and near anarchy, and Heaven knows what may be happening there.’ He marched away to join the waiting priest.
‘Yes, Heaven only knows,’ Lady Mabilia echoed softly. ‘Oh, surely this time it will happen, Elys. Surely St Peter and St Paul will prevail.’
