Of Beginnings and Endings Read online

  Since Arthur, unlike his robust younger brother, Prince Henry, never was well for long throughout the course of his life and his lengthy reign, usually, one or two longevity-booster capsules were enough to put him to rights, however, and Harold began to let longer and longer periods elapse between the times when he took them himself, hoarding the irreplaceable things against the dread that Arthur's next illness might be worse and require more of the steadily dwindling supply.

  In the spring of A. D. 1506, there came by sea routes word of a great and most terrible plague that even then was ravaging parts of the middle eastern lands. Although in some ways similar to the Black Death and causing numerous fatalities, it also was said to differ in diverse ways from that other, centuries-old scourge. All that seemed to be known of its origin was that the pest had been moving westward out of Asia for some years. It had decimated the Syrias, then rampaged through Turkey and Armenia; all Outremer had been hard hit by it, and some declared that the Pope of the East lay dead and that Constantinople resembled a huge and reeking charnel house. In Alexandria, the Khalifah had closed every port in Egypt, Libia, and Tunisia, then set armed men to turn back any caravan bound from any direction other than south.

  By late summer, word was that the new-come pest was rife in the Aegean isles, Crete, Greece, and the countless little principalities that in Harold's world were the Balkans. By the following spring, all Italy was reeling from the shock of its onset, along with the kingdoms which lay along the mighty Danube River, from Kilia to Gran, the cities of Buda and Pesth being especially hard hit by it, it was rumored. In England, those who had hoped that the colder, wetter climate and the salt sea moat that lay on all quarters might protect the realm from these horrifying new pest ravages were disillusioned and thrown into despair when outbreaks were reported first in Sweden, then in the Empire Duchy of Pomern, and finally in Copenhagen; the pest appeared in Sweden and Denmark in seaports, but that in Pomern first burst out in a large and wealthy monastery.

  As the relentless sweep of the plague neared English shores, more rumors and much wild speculation concerning it and its effects flew before it. In the East, it had earned the name of Priests' Plague because such an inordinate number of clergy had succumbed to it. But from what Harold had been able to get from numerous conversationalists from oversea he had deliberately sought out for just this purpose, folk in towns wherein there was much trade had seemed to suffer the ravages of the disease far and away more than had those scattered out in the countrysides. Also, a very high number of the nobility seemed to come down with it, and this dictum seemed to apply to all countries hit so far. At that time, he had been unable to make rhyme or reason out of the mass of information.

  During the winter of A. D. 1507-08, when the pest was in full force in Burgundy, France, and Frisia, every man and woman possessed of any wit knew that England and Wales must surely be next, and an endless chanting proceeded from every church, chapel, cathedral, and monastic establishment, while the entire island seemed to be overlain by day and by night with a thickening pall of the smoke of frankincense. But undaunted by pious prayers or burning incense, the Priests' Plague came in its own time to unleash its countless horrors upon King Henry and his miserable subjects.

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  Within a period of fourteen months of the coming of the Priests' Plague, sixty percent of the nobility and nearly half the gentry of England and Wales were dead, along with most of their households. Nor had the court been spared. King Henry and his children, dosed lavishly with Harold's longevity-booster capsules, still lived in health, but his queen had declined in favor of a decoction compounded by her personal physicker and both she and said physicker had consequently died.

  Well-to-do persons of all classes in country, towns, and cities—and most especially port cities situated on seacoasts and the navigable rivers and canals—had died like flies. But hardest hit of all walks in the land had been the clergy; not a single archbishop remained alive and precious few bishops or monsignors, Canterbury and Yorkminster being almost untenanted by any save wailing ghosts, as too were a large proportion of the great abbeys of the land.

  But there the comparison to the Great Plagues or Black Death ceased, for while gentry and yeomanry out on the land had sickened and often died with their families and households, the bulk of the humbler sorts had been unaffected or not much affected or afflicted by the sweeping catastrophe. There had been few real halts to the production of food crops and kine husbandry, and such shortages of foodstuffs as had occurred in the land had been caused not by the lack but by the fully understandable reluctance of folk to transport it to or even near the stricken centers of population.

  Also, despite the widespread extirpations of high-ranking or powerful churchmen and their retinues and households, and the virtual extinctions of large, ancient, and wealthy monastic communities, religion still flourished in all the land, especially on the humble parish level and in the form of smaller and poorer or more strictly ordered abbeys and monastic groups. Moreover, as often is the case under such awful circumstances, the advent of the hideous, death-dealing scourge upon the realm and its relentless movement among its helpless victims sparked a fresh flowering of religious zeal among the bulk of the survivors of all stations.

  Despite a lack of general famine in most of England and Wales, things were quite bad enough for a while. Bands of now-masterless folk wandered the face of the land, looting castles, manors, and halls, savaging underpopulated towns, sometimes fighting with such similar bands as they encountered in their rovings; but over time, not a few of these came down with Priests' Plague themselves, and most of the thus-sobered or outright terrified folk either returned to the land or took to the woodlands and wastes to live by banditry and poaching of the unhunted and rapidly proliferating game beasts. The short sway of these lawless bands had wrought much terror, suffering, and harm upon the already-stricken land, but they had, unknowing of it, also wrought not a little good in their depredations, Harold later concluded, in that they had wantonly fired numerous of the steadings, farms, halls, manors, castles, and abbeys after they had looted them, thus destroying and subjecting to direct-flame sterilization countless reservoirs of the plague.

  Indeed, as the court and realm slowly, in fits and starts, began to recover to some extent, King Henry—at Harold's insistent urgings—had ordered the destruction by fire of the bodies and effects of plague victims and the use of fire, boiling water, and powerful caustics to thoroughly cleanse all nonflammable items once owned by those now dead of the pest and the interiors of all the now-untenanted buildings. All existing cesspits were filled in and new ones dug elsewhere. In numerous seaports, hulks were packed with flammables, stacked with the remains of victims, towed well out to sea, and set aflame. Harold was later convinced that it had been these stern measures by the king's order that had aided in preventing in England and Wales the sudden recurrences of plague that racked parts of Italy, France, the Spanish Peninsula, and other areas for two or three or more years after its initial onset.

  Mainland Scotland had suffered about as badly as its southern neighbor, especially in the Lowlands, but not so the western isles or Ireland. The Irish ports, like those of Egypt, had been tightly closed long before the pest came to England, Wales, and Scotland; not even the routine coastal raidings had been practiced by the wild Irish on the western seaboards of the larger island during the course of the plague, a real blessing in the underpopulated, ill-defended time.

  At the height of the ghastly resurgence of the plague in Italy, the Roman Pope, Saint Peter's Bishop of the West, had sickened and died and his successor, Cardinal Diego al-Ahbyahd de Malaga, had felt it imperative in the confused times to re-empower Christian monarchs to reassume the filling of sees falling vacant within their realms.

  While the various royal residences here and there were being sterilized according to the king's dictates, he and what by then remained of his court and retinue journeyed about the country, meeting and reassuring all of any st
ation with whom they came in contact, avoiding towns, castles, and abbeys and living in pavilions, mostly. Foods of most sorts and forage were found to be plentiful in the countryside and the hunting was superb.

  Immediately upon discovering that Osbert Norton, Bishop of Durham, had lived through an attack of the Priests' Plague and fully recovered his health, King Henry had designated the middle-aged cleric to fill the vacant archbishopric at Canterbury, then, prior to his departure south, had seen the now-senior churchman of the realm consecrate his erstwhile chaplain-physicker, Harold Ceanmoor of York, archbishop of that city and archdiocese. That much accomplished, the monarch had provided the bemused Harold as complete a retinue as straitened circumstances would allow and sent him off around the realm to seek out worthy monsignors, abbots, priests, even lowly deacons, if necessary and that was all that still lived, to fill the plentitude of empty bishops' seats.

  To Harold's protestations of unworthiness for such unearned rank, honors, and responsibilities, the scarred warrior-king had replied in private, "Pah! If any man deserves rank and honors, it's you, old friend. Man, you saved my life and the lives of my get in the plague and my chosen heir's twice over, now. Were you at all worldly and warlike, I'd see you knighted and then ennobled, but as you seem most comfortable in a cassock, then I bow humbly to the dictates of God and your conscience and name you a prince of the Church as now is my regal right, once more. I'd meant, in the beginning, to place you at Canterbury and then fight the Church, if necessary, to retain you there, but this way is going to be much better, much easier, I think. You've been consecrated by a man who might well have succeeded to his present, paramount place even without the thorough winnowing of his peers by this plague, so it will be up to him to fight any battles that might loom on account of your elevation. Far better him than me to fight any contentious clerics." The king had chuckled.

  "As regards your upcoming journeyings, old friend, there lives no man, clerical or lay, of any station, into whose judgment and loyalty I place more trust. You own the wisdom of more years than ever I or any man of whom I can think will ever live to see. Moreover, you know the kind of men I and the realm need for bishops, and you own the God-given wit to easily and quickly see though the charlatans and poseurs you will doubtless encounter, hither and yon."

  "Harold, I care not a fig for the birth or breeding of the men you place in these vacant sees, only that they be personally worthy and capable, relatively honest and scrupulous, and at least outwardly pious, with their loyalty being to king first, to Rome second."

  And that was how it had been. His Grace Harold Kenmore, Archbishop of York, had set out upon his way, following the orders of his king, his friend, and performing those tasks set to him by his monarch to the best of his abilities. And he had done well, as Henry had known he would. Right many a humble but honest, loyal, and capable English or Welsh parish priest had found himself abruptly departing his peaceful country parish forever to wear the ring of an office he never had so much as dreamed of filling. Gradually, the realm began to show signs of recovery, and it was well that recover it did, for less than three years after Harold's elevation, King Henry's horse chanced to fall whilst he and the hunt pursued a fine stag in the New Forest and the monarch died instantly of a broken neck. Thanks to the meticulous groundwork laid by Henry, the succession was uncontested, peaceful, and orderly.

  Arthur II Tudor was not yet twenty-six when crowned by Osbert, Archbishop of Canterbury; his wife and one infant had died, but he still had two young sons and a daughter. Very soon after he became king, a marriage was arranged for him with a daughter of the King of Denmark and Norway. Astrid of Denmark produced two more children to him before dying in childbirth. The next marriage arranged for him was with a daughter of his second cousin (once removed), the Ard-Righ of Ireland, Brigid of Tara; of the five births, two of the infants were stillborn, one died while still in the cradle, but the other two outlived their mother. On the twentieth anniversary of his coronation, King Arthur II was again a widower, and he and his councilors were seeking about for an advantageous marriage for both him and his widower-brother, His Grace Sir Henry Tudor, Duke of Aquitaine.

  With maturity and succession, Arthur Tudor's general health had improved to the point that Harold had finally felt it safe to leave the court and remove to his see at Yorkminster, wherein in the years since his elevation he had spent only brief periods of time and then only when the court had chanced to be in proximity to the city of York, the functions of his office having been performed as needed by local bishops and monsignors.

  With the blessings of King Arthur, who worshiped this gentle, erudite man who had seen him through so many illnesses, who had been his loved father's friend and confidant and was his as well, and with a retinue of clerical advisers and specialists loaned by Osbert Norton of Canterbury, Harold Kenmore had made his way back to the city that had for long been his home.

  Throughout the widespread, protracted fighting that came to be called the War of the Three Marriages, Harold lived peacefully in York and its environs, leaving on only two occasions, both of these to rush to the bedside of Arthur and restore his threatened health with doses of the dwindling supply of longevity-booster capsules. Then, even as the war had ended, a fresh bout of the dreaded Priests' Plague had rampaged through Europe and into England, Wales, Scotland, and, this time, even the Hebrides, the Danish Islands, Iceland, and Ireland.

  Immediately upon receiving word of the advent of the pest, Harold had prepared his archdiocese as well as he quickly could and removed to court, fearing for the well-being of the ever susceptible Arthur, the monarch's brother, Duke Henry, being even then already dead of the plague in Aquitaine.

  This second visitation of the murderous disease upon England, Wales, and those parts of Scotland which had suffered in the first episode was not as costly of lives as had been the initial one, but still was it bad enough, following as it did the very same pattern of striking principally nobility and their immediate retainers and servants, large abbeys, well-to-do country gentry, ports, cities, and larger towns.

  Even as before, a goodly proportion of the court were badly stricken, but this time not so many died, and of those who did die, Harold noted but few who were then old enough to have been alive at the time of the initial onset of the deadly pest.

  King Arthur, however, very nearly died of this second outbreak, and by the time he was once more on his feet and reordering the realm, Harold had less than two dozen of the longevity-booster capsules remaining him.

  But the king, recalling his sire in identical circumstances, had performed splendidly in the crises. After decreeing the burning of corpses and their flammable effects, the stringent cleaning of the interiors of buildings, the filling in of cesspits, the scourings of towns and cities, and the towing out to sea and burning of hulks filled with corpses, he and the court had set out on a procession around the realm, avoiding castles, manors, halls, or abbeys and biding in pavilions set up in fields and leas, moors and forests, under the sky.

  With Osbert Norton dead (not of the Priests' Plague, but rather of an infected rat bite) and Canterbury once more depopulated of the clergy and their retainers, Arthur had designated Yorkminster to henceforth be the paramount archdiocese of his realm and had empowered Harold to fill all vacant sees. Once again, Harold Kenmore performed the bidding of his monarch, then made his way back to York and Yorkminster and the multitude of tasks that there awaited him. But he was nothing if not a consummate administrator, and within the year he had set matters once more aright and running smoothly.

  So seldom indulging himself with a single longevity-booster capsule lest in so doing he possibly doom the sickly monarch, so beset constantly with the cares and worries of his high office, Harold Kenmore had aged—not so much or at all so fast as those about him, of course, those never treated with the longevity drugs at all—but he remained unaware of the fact until he again saw Emmett O'Malley.

  As paramount churchman in all of England and W
ales, his court and establishment at Yorkminster was grown as large and complex as the court of his king, with a never-ending stream of visitors of all stations, supplicants, messengers from the royal court and from Rome and from high-ranking churchmen in foreign lands, nobles bound on one errand or another, and, it sometimes seemed to him, fully half the population of the realm. Naturally, he could not himself spend all day every day doing nothing but meeting with supplicants and the like, so he had of course surrounded himself with concentric layers of men whose task was to winnow out the never-ending streams, and see the most of them met by and handled by lower-ranking subordinates, with only the business that could be performed properly by no other man eventually appearing before the Archbishop of York himself.

  Of course, it did not always work out in just the ways Harold had envisioned upon setting it all up. Even men vowed to poverty right often fall to the insistent temptation of silver and gold, and what with the decimations of the clergy by the Priests' Plague, not all of the men making up his insulating layers were men of the cloth, anyway. When, one morning, he was presented with the usual list of those with whom he was to meet this day, he just glanced at it briefly, not even noticing the names, just the numbers of the supplicants and the times of their appointments. But even had he looked more closely, he later determined, he might well still have passed over the clerk's rendition of the name: "Sir Ymit Me Badrag Ui Maile, said to be a high noble of the Irish Kingdom of Lagan."