Such a simple solution to all the King’s problems. That was how it appeared to Nicholas that day when he learned the whole story. A frayed and worn parchment told of the gift, the wondrous gift, passed to St Thomas in exile. The man must have been almost an angel to have been granted such a vision and so magnificent a treasure from the Holy Virgin herself! No one else would have been vouchsafed a vision of her, let alone a gift. But St Thomas took it, and straightway obeyed her injunction, delivering it to a monastery where it could be buried for safekeeping until it was needed.
And here it was in London, brought especially for the King. And when brought, it remained unused!
Dear Christ in Heaven, the fools who had withheld it must have rued the day they were born. If only they had delivered it to the King on the day of his coronation, his reign would have been blessed, and all the catalogue of disasters, from his choice of advisers, to his inept war-leadership and failures over his French territories, would have been reversed. But no, some baron or other must have decided that the King had no need of such a great boon, and had rejected the oil. For preference, they made use of the normal holy oil used for his predecessors. That baron must be kicking himself now, Nicholas thought to himself as he scurried to the King to tell him all about the wondrous discovery he had made.
The King had appreciated the importance in an instant. And under Nicholas’s prompt urging, had agreed to send Nicholas to the Pope with a request for his aid.
It had taken an age, that journey. All the way to Avignon to the Pope’s palace, and then returning with the sad response which had ruined Nicholas’s life.
The unfairness of it was shocking. Truly shocking. All Nicholas had tried to do was help others, and yet here he was, sent on his way home with the Pope’s message: ‘If you wish to be anointed, pray be so. It can do no harm. But I cannot spare my cardinals at present to do it for you.’ That was the gist of the courtly Latin which Nicholas had to read out to a dumbfounded King on his return.
Dear God, it was as close as he had ever been to being murdered, from the look on the monarch’s face. Nicholas had already heard of the King’s tempers, even though this was before the terrible revenge which he visited upon his enemies after Boroughbridge, and the fact that the Pope had elevated Nicholas to papal penitentiary, as well as giving him a licence to allow him to take Cambridge University clerks and install them in vacant benefices, did not affect the King. No, he would have nothing to do with Nicholas of Wisbech. His career was ended.
It had taken him all his courage to come here to Beaulieu to visit the King and to try to persuade him to look upon him more favourably. After all, it was not his fault that the Pope chose not to comply with the King’s request. The Pope had made it plain that he wouldn’t help by sending one of his own cardinals, but he did give permission to the King to have any of his bishops in the land conduct the ceremony and anoint him. So the mission was not a complete disaster. Nicholas had secured that. And all the King need do was arrange for a bishop to visit him with the oil, and all would be well. Surely, if he was touched by the holy oil of St Thomas, his reign would be cured of malignancy and treachery, and King Edward could reign contentedly from then on.
But he wouldn’t so much as meet with the friar. To the King, Friar Nicholas was dead. It was so unjust that he could burst from simple indignation.
Chapter Thirteen
Third Monday after Easter15
Eltham Palace
Earl Edward strode along the passageway and burst in through the door to his tutor’s chamber without ceremony. ‘Richard?’
Seated behind his desk, the clerk made little impact, the Earl thought. There were many others who had tried to teach him in the past, but none had managed to affect him in the same way as this man from Bury.
There was a seriousness about him that was reassuring. Most of the others by whom the Earl had been tutored had been more frivolous. They sought to win his friendship, rather than his respect. Perhaps, he considered, they already respected his own position too much to be able to treat their own with any great devotion. They were mere servants, and could not see themselves attain any higher ambition or post.
Richard was different, though. For one thing, he clearly viewed the Earl as malleable. He did not seek to bow to the Earl’s will at every opportunity: to his mind, the Earl was a bright, intelligent twelve-year-old, and as such was demanding of instruction. And for that, Bury sought to ensure that the Earl’s mind was filled with material suitable to his station. And to the prophecy.
There was so much bound to his name, the Earl knew. He respected the prophecies, naturally, but at the same time he was a calculating realist. It was his calculation that the fact of the prophecies would make people regard him in a subtly different light than that by which they viewed others, and that, for a man who was to become King, was a very useful point. Certainly, he had already heard men whisper comments about him which showed that they were alive to the differences between him and his father. ‘A dragon, then a goat,’ they said. All knew what that meant. There was an inevitable sequence in life: after a strong, virile King there tended to follow an unfortunate one. Perhaps the successor would be incompetent, or more likely badly served by his advisers, but that made little difference. The fact was, that there was a recurring fluctuation in the fortunes of succeeding kings. And Earl Edward’s father was not a fortunate ruler.
Such prophecies affected some men more than others, and Richard of Bury was exceedingly susceptible to their allure. He lived and breathed the magnificent stories which were already weaving themselves about his earl. Earl Edward would become King, he would unite the Scottish within his realm, bring all the lost lands back under the Crown, win over the French territories once more, renewing the fabulous Angevin Empire, take for himself the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, and reconquer the Holy Land … Truly, Earl Edward would become a king to rival King Arthur.
But that was not to say that Richard of Bury was lax in his teaching of the Earl. That was not his way. He believed that God gave men an innate ability, a skill, but that the perfection of that skill was the duty of the man who possessed it. Thus, if Earl Edward was capable of being a new paladin, he must be shown the correct ways in which he must improve himself so as to bring out his own best qualities.
This determination had already led to some arguments, for on occasion when the Earl awoke with a mild hangover, the last thing he desired was a serious contemplation of the life of King Arthur, or Alexander of Macedon. And yet that is what he was forced to study, no matter the tiredness of which he complained. Richard was indefatigable in his resolve: the Earl would become a great world ruler, and must not waste a moment in striving to learn all he could that would make him a good King.
‘Today, my Lord Chester, I should like to talk about the marvellous leader, Julius Caesar, the man who conquered Rome itself, and the world. He was the foremost leader in warfare, and in the arts, too. A strong man, who was finally betrayed by those whom he had trusted.’
‘Is it true that he conquered England too?’
‘He conducted two excursions on to your soil, my Lord. It was Claudius who actually added England to the Roman Empire, though, not him.’
Earl Edward nodded, but he was considering other matters as he opened the book passed to him by Bury.
‘You seem distracted, My Lord?’