‘The Pilgrimage of Grace,’ Jarvis Broome went on, ‘1536. This was a mass rising of the North of England against the King’s policies, against his advisers, of course, rather than against the King himself. There were many reasons for the revolt, some to do with taxation, some to do with personal jealousies, the usual sort of mixture, but the principal reason was religious. The rebels objected to the changes that had taken place and the further changes they knew were coming, including the Dissolution of the Monasteries. They didn’t want a Protestant Reformation. They wanted to keep a Catholic England. The banners and the symbols tell the story. They marched behind banners of the Five Wounds of Christ, which showed a bleeding heart, sometimes a Host, above a chalice, both surrounded at the corners of the illustration by the pierced hands and feet of Christ on the cross.’
‘What happened to them?’ said Powerscourt.
‘They made the great mistake of trusting the King’s word,’ Broome replied. ‘At one stage they could have marched to London and toppled the Tudors from their throne. But they were picked off bit by bit by duplicity and double dealing. The ring leaders were all executed.’
‘How?’ said Powerscourt suddenly.
‘Most of them were beheaded. Their heads were left stuck in prominent places in the towns and cities where they came from. Anybody who tried to cut them down was liable to meet the same fate themselves.’
Patrick Butler had fallen silent as they peered at the ruins of the Lady Chapel in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. He had felt in his pocket for the three proposals he had written out. None of them felt quite right at this moment. He found that his brain had delivered to him a newspaper headline that seemed to sum up his predicament. Editor Lost For Words.
Anne Herbert thought the ruins of the Lady Chapel looked remarkably similar to the ruins of the nave and the high altar. Try as she might, she couldn’t see much difference. She hoped her children were behaving themselves with their grandmother.
‘They say King Arthur and his knights lived round here, Anne,’ said Patrick, recovering his powers of speech. ‘He came with a great army to rescue Queen Guinevere who had been imprisoned by his enemies in a castle on the tor.’
Anne Herbert tried to imagine Patrick as a Knight of the Round Table, Sir Galahad or Sir Lancelot or Sir Bedevere. She couldn’t manage it. A monk perhaps, creating a Book of Hours or copying out the Gospels with occasional rude asides in the margins, yes, but mounted on horseback and riding into battle, no.
‘Would you have liked to live in those times, Anne? Handsome young men on horseback pressing their suits?’
‘I think I might have been the Lady of Shalott,’ said Anne, ‘floating down to Camelot behind that rotting barn over there.’ Privately she felt that the knights would have said their piece by now, proposals of wedlock delivered from behind a visor in sub Tennysonian verse, the suitor clanking on bended knee before her.
‘I don’t think I’d have liked it much then,’ said Patrick. ‘Life can’t have been much fun for a humble scribe. I tell you what,’ he said, postponing things yet again, ‘why don’t we have lunch and then climb to the top of the tor.’
‘What most historians have not realized up until now,’ Jarvis Broome was back sitting at his desk, ‘is the link between the violence, the savagery of the repression of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 and the comparatively peaceful passage of the Dissolution of the Monasteries two or three years later. You can read many history books, Lord Powerscourt, which fail to make to make any link at all between those two facts. Previous historians talk blithely about how the acceptance of the Dissolution shows the monasteries were known to have been corrupt, or were not loved by the people. In fact the people were terrified by the reprisals handed out to the northern rebels. They were too frightened to risk their necks by opposing the end of the abbeys. I regard it as a complete failure of historical imagination and I hope to put the record straight.’
Powerscourt thought that mutual co-operation and brotherly love between the practitioners of the historian’s craft was not going to get any better.
‘Do we know how many people did oppose the Dissolution? And do we know what happened to them?’
‘I fear,’ said Jarvis Broome, ‘that they were all executed. It is difficult to be precise about the numbers as the records have often been lost. Some of the Northern abbots were believed to have fled south to join their colleagues in other monasteries. They too were put to death.’
The sun had gone in while Anne Herbert and Patrick Butler ate their modest lunch in the George and Pilgrims Hotel. There was a wind rising as they set off out of the town towards the path that led to the summit of Glastonbury Tor, a round hill rising some three hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding plain.
‘I came here when I was eleven or twelve with a history master from school, Anne,’ said Patrick as they reached the path that led to the summit. ‘Long ago, all this plain was water, it was the lake of Avalon. We had to learn bits of the Idylls of the King to declaim when we reached the top.’
‘Can you remember any of it, Patrick?’ said Anne, taking his arm as their route twisted steeply uphill.
Patrick frowned. The wind was very strong now, blowing fiercely through his hair. It was just beginning to rain.
‘I am going a long way
With these thou seeest – if indeed I go -
For all my mind is clouded with a doubt
To the island valley of Avillion.
‘It’s Arthur speaking, Anne, on his final journey, somewhere round where we are now.’
Last Words of Dying King, Patrick Butler thought to himself, translating the Passing of Arthur into a contemporary headline for the Grafton Mercury.
‘Can you remember any more, Patrick? It’s lovely.’
He paused and put his hand to his forehead. ‘I’m not sure. I think so. Maybe I should wait until we get to the top. If you still want to reach the top, that is, Anne. We’ll both be soaked to the skin. We may even get blown away.’
‘I don’t think we should give up now,’ said Anne, bending low against the wind and hurrying as fast as she could towards the little church on the summit.
The last hundred and fifty feet took them over half an hour. Sometimes the wind seemed to die down, then it would hit them full in the face as they moved on to another side of the slope. Once Anne slipped on the wet grass and had to be hauled back up again. The noise of the gale was very loud. They could see the branches of the trees bending and swaying below them. They kept their heads well down, eyes glued to the path. Overhead dark birds circled, keeping watch over their lofty kingdom. Sullen grey clouds were racing low across the sky. Patrick was cursing under his breath. Anne was exhilarated, rejoicing in their rain drenched adventure.
At last they reached the top and huddled under all that remained of the little chapel of Saint Michael. Patrick pointed dramatically at the valley beneath them and shouted into the wind:
‘Avillion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow
Nor ever wind blows loudly: but it lies,
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.’
Now. It came to Patrick Butler in a flash. Now was the time to ask her. Forget all those proposals in his pocket. Forget about William Shakespeare and his sonnets. Forget about John Donne and his love poetry. Forget the pretty speeches he had rehearsed as he lay on the hard single bed in his lodgings. Forget all the business of waiting for the right moment. This was the right moment. Now or never. He turned towards her, his face drenched by the rain, his hair blown into an unruly sodden mass, flecks of mud on his trousers and his coat. But his eyes were bright.