REFIGURING
I was about to join the bustling motorway when the warning light came on. Miraculously, here was a tyre-changing outfit, and it was open, on a Sunday, in Winter … Again I approached the motorway. The warning light came on again… and a message: a further fault… I’d have to take the car home slowly, ask at the specialist garage in the morning.
Meanwhile, I figured, I’d make the most of the day. The remains of an ancient abbey beckoned. The church was open … Warm air drew me in … The crypt was even warmer. The books were welcoming, too … and that was where I saw that weird tale of an ancient stone cross.
Apparently, the stone cross had been here for half a millennium, but, then, lost at the Dissolution, half a millennium ago. Where had it stood? I climbed the stair, back into the church.
As if I’d spoken my thoughts aloud, a white-haired warden with sky blue eyes appeared, smiling. He pointed up to a small high window. “See those remains of stone steps? They lead nowhere now but we think that there was once a turret there, where the cross was worshipped by pilgrims.” He nodded towards the walls of the chapel at the foot of the turret. “Perhaps these vivid illustrations of Hell encouraged penitents to make the most of their time here!”
I had to figure this out further. Back in the crypt was this translation of an old account of the journey of the stone cross to this place and the power it had held for a Harold Godwinson, when it had stood at the heart of his abbey church.
Apparently, the cross had appeared as mysteriously as it had vanished. It had been carved during the ‘Age of Saints’ and buried at Montacute to protect it from Viking raiders; but why would the angel in the blacksmith’s dream want it raised up in Harold’s time?
The writer was convincing and insisted that the dreamer was honest, and as stunned as anyone when the treasure was unearthed exactly as the angel had predicted. Or was this just a storyteller’s device? Was it a lie – encouraged by Harold, to promote his abbey church … or to attract pilgrim trade? Even so, it felt strange that we dismiss it now.
When faith was a part of everyday life, did no-one fear that the smaller cross under the figure’s right arm might warn of a future sacrifice to come? Did the bell under his left arm not portend a warning knell? Was the book of the gospels – amazingly preserved – not seen as a key to answers?
The figure on the cross was carved skilfully from black flint. Did no-one see this as a warning to the church against treasuring bright metals such as gold, though church treasures had previously tempted Viking invaders? Rather, they tried to honour it with jewelled ornaments, removed only when blood gushed from the stone as they tried to nail them in … Well, of course it would: the black flint of Montacute was rich in iron, a suitable base for a carving of the sacrificial figure.
Attention turned to miracles, to bring in pilgrims, and their money. Yet, if the figure on the cross was who they said he was, what would he have thought of this?
Harold, cured of paralysis at this cross, planned to build a college for priests to be sent out to preach to the world… a trade empire or empire of military control? For, despite his claim to faith, he saw no reason to stop attacking the people of Wales. No. He’d dedicate treasures to the abbey, come by from booty and from taxes and labour imposed upon the poor. Had he never considered what that figure represented on the cross would think of how he converted the cross to his own purposes?
Huge outdoor hearths had been excavated, evidence of rich feasts, heavy drinking and worldwide trade. One family owned one church and its dues, including tithes and fees for funerals. Attendance was enforced. Dissenters were tortured, executed and buried where devils were believed to dwell, to ensure that they went to hell. Could the figure represented on the cross condone this?
What good could come of his gilded statues of twelve apostles and two lions, of silver vessels for the altar, gold for feast days, of gold and silver crosses, reliquaries and candlesticks? What good the gold-embellished gospels, while the Word within those gospels was unheeded? He’d meant this treasure to adorn his burial place; instead it helped to incite the Norman king to cause his death, to steal his treasures.
Even Tovi, friend and advisor to the Viking King Cnut, had allowed his wife to dress the cross as a doll – as if the figure on the cross was a plaything for those in power. Had they forgotten the warning of Cnut’s predecessor, Svein Forkbeard, struck down, at the summit of his power, supposedly miraculously, at the sight of the risen saint, Edmund?[1]
I read the writing on the wall: Harold, son of then powerful Earl Godwin, brother of King Edward the Confessor’s wife, Edith, had been a hero to his people. He was “broad-shouldered, tall, handsome, enormously strong, wise and a fine commander of soldiers”. He was “the king’s right-hand man, supreme in the land, by far the most outstanding man in England,” after King Edward died, “elected by unanimous consent, for even his enemies could think of no-one to propose in his place.” [2]
Yet he was displaced, by the Conqueror. Apparently, Harold’s father, Earl Godwin, had brutally, arrogantly, betrayed the king and his kin. Far from repentant, after the torture and murder of Edward’s brother, his stream of deceit and treachery had continued to undermine the king’s reign, and his marriage to Godwin’s sister. [3]
So, in a sense, Harold had been sacrificed on account of his father’s sins – and the land had suffered with him. Did these ‘Christian’ writers not figure that, had Harold’s people heard the message at the heart of those gospels, the Conquest might have been avoided?
Harold showered the figure on the cross with gifts, processions and prostration. He was answered with the miracle of the figure’s sudden, sad, downwards look – surely, a warning?
Harold’s customary military wisdom left him, men said, when he failed to await further troops before defending his land against the Norman invaders. Yet had he been wise when he had fought his people in the West? Had he been wise to attempt to appease church and kin by taking a Norman wife in addition to Edith Swan-neck, mother of his children, the only person able to identify his remains, though about to bear their last son?
So the Conqueror could claim the need to impose new order on church and country – and his son, too, plundering this church to enrich his church at Caen. Even so, the figure on the cross seemed still to show his way. It was as if he had not failed them, though people had failed to follow him.
The original narrator of the miracles had been in service here since the age of five. He seemed scrupulous in his attempt to record precise truths. And truths were conveyed by his tales, even should details be doubted. It was claimed that the figure on the cross caused confusion to robbers, so that they became lost in the marshes, and then caused a traveller to send them into the arms of the maker of the vessels taken – so that the vessels were returned. Yet, then, three men were put to death, the fourth branded, instead, his life spared because he had pleaded benefit of clergy. What would the figure on the cross have made of this?
Surely, the priest should have been more culpable, not less! When the figure on the cross appeared to offer healing, it was on the understanding that men would turn to him, following his ways. So lives were spared and witnesses filled with joy. So the writer said.
Intervening to prevent a theft during a time of civil war, the figure on the cross blinded and confused the Flemish thieves. The thieves were flogged, but then, their sight was restored and they were set free. Intervening to stop sacrilege of a party of drunkards, led by Humphry de Barcetose, on his horse, the figure on the cross made him insane until he should repent. Other thieves, too, were struck blind until they repented. Miracles like these made more sense, but how far were such tales developed to encourage the pilgrim trade?
Something here had deterred even Henry VIII, who, five hundred years later, resolved to destroy the entire economy of the land; for, when he dissolved the abbeys, this was the last to go. Even at their last service here, the monks had sung a prayer of hope that the mother of their lord would surely continue to redeem the lost.
The figure on the cross is strangely forgotten now, but an inspiring statue of the handsome, hapless Harold hangs from the outside wall of the church. Few gather by his grave, though – perhaps deterred by too many alternative tales of his burial place – perhaps because it does not matter anymore. There is little to mark the place. Once it had been near the altar of a magnificent medieval abbey. Now it is outside the church and cars roar past.
The church stands, but, of that abbey, little but the fairy-tale remnant of its quaint gateway, of unevenly shaped, still bright scarlet bricks… and the river, once “fishful”, once engineered to be part of the pattern of the trade of the medieval town, is but a passing place for walkers.
Ancient forests and palaces are being resurrected now but it is inconceivable that a cracked stone, with a dark flint figure on a cross, could re-appear. Yet what would people make of it now, if it did?
And what would they make of that spectacle of red and white cows, refusing to pull the cart carrying it, till the place was named where they were to go – to the then humble church that was to become so special to Harold, the soon to be doomed last of the Anglo Saxon kings?
How striking that sight – even the story of that sight … but had this been just a narrative device, added to impress listeners?
It could hardly be seen as significant, today, that a warning light on a red car on a white, misty, wet winter day, could lead here.
And yet, had I asked all who stopped by that day, why they were here, would they have said?
Clouds had hung heavy in the sky all day; now they darkened. The air hissed bitter cold. The church shut its doors. One place remained open – an ancient inn, overlooking the churchyard – the Welsh Harp – reminding me of Harold’s battles against the Welsh.
The inn was warm and welcoming … But I figured that I could say nothing about what I’d seen and thought – nor about the blind spots this age might have, even while seeing blind spots of ages gone before – nor even of the prospect of the journey home.
[1] Robin Fleming, Britain After Rome, Penguin 2010, pp.304-338.
[2] Waltham Abbey, Essex. Here, Hannah reads from the outside wall of the church. Other information is from leaflets in the crypt and in the church at Montacute, Somerset, origin of the cross. Particular reference is made to Dean, Dinah – The legend of the Miraculous Cross of Waltham – Waltham Abbey Historical Society – 2002. See, too, their leaflet, The Burial of Harold at Waltham – 2008.
[3] Garmondway, G.N. (tr) – Anglo Saxon Chronicle – Dent – 1982. See Earl Godwine 1034-1052. See Edward and Harold 1066. See, too, Schauma, S. – A History of Britain – BBC – 2000. Ch.2 Also Humble, R. – The Saxon Kings – ed. Fraser A. – Book Club – 1986. Ch.8 eg p.174 re “atrocities” of Earl Godwine.
M. Anne Alexander came to writing as an outcome of counselling and flourished as an active member of the award-winning Enfield Poets and Stanza Groups. She generally explores places with personal, historical and contemporary significance. Her background is as a lecturer in English and teacher of Music. Her poetry is now widely published, including in two anthologies and a pamphlet, Wildflowers, (Poetry Space, 2021). She is also author of fiction and non-fiction and of Thomas Hardy: the “dream-country” of his fiction – a study of the creative process (Vision Press/Barnes & Noble).
www.poeticvoices.live /portfolio/alexander-anne.
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