HISTORY: So Clear, So Obvious

 There's a difference between history and historical fiction, but sometimes the two can overlap. Write about a real historical character and the author has to do all the research that an academic historian would. The facts are there and cannot be changed. The difference is that the author of fiction is free to interpret the facts and the impulses behind them, in a way that suits a dramatic narrative, inventing thoughts and words for characters.

Historians, by contrast, are expected to stick to the records. It doesn't stop them interpreting facts though, with the benefit of hindsight, and that can be a tricky matter. It can involve viewing past events through the lens of the present. And present understanding can be just as subjectively skewed as that of our ancestors. Hindsight can cast light on a great many things, but sometimes the light it casts creates wholly deceptive shadows.

One story whose interpretation has always fascinated me begins in 1144, when William, a 12 year old tanner’s apprentice in the city of Norwich, vanished. His mutilated body was eventually found in a wood. For various reasons (Anglo-Saxon v Norman politics, ecclesiastical quests for lucrative relics, sheer malice, overheated imaginations etc) it was concluded that William had been tortured and crucified by the Jews of Norwich. The case was taken up, with relish, by a Norwich monk, Thomas of Monmouth, and expanded into a hugely gothic account, offering dozens of proofs that little William had been ritually sacrificed by the wicked Jews. The Catholic church hesitated over recognising the miracles that followed, so little “Saint” William was never actually officially canonised, but he was recognised as a saint and child martyr in Norwich.

A hundred years later, the murder of little “saint” Hugh of Lincoln was also recognised as an obvious case of Jewish ritual murder, and many of the Jews of Lincoln were promptly rounded up and hanged. The Jews of Norwich were a little luckier. They had forty-five years of freedom after William’s death before the massacres began.

Little Saint Hugh was more famous. He got a mention in Chaucer and a ballad by Steeleye Span.

It’s all a typical story of anti-Semitism in Mediaeval Europe, nasty but predictable. What really fascinates me, though, is the reinterpretation of the story in the latter part of the 20th century. According to Thomas of Monmouth’s colourful account, William’s body was found dressed in jacket and shoes. Just jacket and shoes? It doesn’t say, but historian Vivian Lipman, in 1967, concluded that the body must have been half stripped. Other historians then leapt to a similar conclusion that the murder was actually a sex crime, perpetrated by a child molester. Just as Thomas of Monmouth embellished the story out of all recognition, so modern historians turned supposition into irrefutable fact. The boy was last seen heading off with a stranger, and was later found naked from the waist down with mutilated genitals. I heard one such historian discussing the case on the radio and explaining, with a scornful laugh that ‘of course, it is obvious to us now that it was the work of a sadistic paedophile.’

Yes, it is obvious, in an age where child molesters are the big, nasty bogeymen who terrorise our imaginations, that it must have been a paedophile. But back in the 12th Century, an age of unquestioning religious stupidity and fear of outsiders, it was equally obvious that it must have been Jews performing a human sacrifice. We seek out and surprisingly discover our own invented monsters. The truth is that no one has any idea what really happened to William in 1144. Maybe he was accidentally killed while playing with friends. Maybe he was attacked in the woods by a wild boar. Maybe he was abducted by aliens who performed experiments on him! Take your pick and choose whatever comes closest to your personal nightmare.

Historians in quest of “facts” should be very cautious about jumping to conclusions when interpreting them. Better to leave those to novelists, who are always right, without needing a single fact to support them.

HISTORY: How Travel Broadens the Mind

As an author (did I ever mention that), I am always fascinated with the idea of people plucked out of their comfort zone by a traumatic event that turns their world upside down. The question is always how do they deal with it? Do they crumble? Do they meekly adapt? Or do they find hidden strengths within themselves to take on the trauma and come through?

As I was wallowing in memories of childhood holidays recently, it suddenly struck me what might have sparked this lifelong interest in how people would react to terrible situations. It was a school trip and, no, nothing traumatic happened to me, other than dropping my purse in a stream. But…

I was twelve, and my high school (I was a first year – I don’t know what that is in new money) organised a trip in the Easter holidays to Switzerland. God knows how my parents scraped together the money for it, but it was the first opportunity for anyone in my family to go abroad (other than my father’s war service), so I went.

I recall Switzerland, once we’d arrived, as a picture-book place of towering, snow-capped mountains, glittering lakes, lush green meadows and happy cows, with gift shops full of cow bells and chalet musical boxes. Imagine Switzerland and it was just like that. So exactly like that that its images slipped into my memory as a neatly packaged collection of holiday snaps, dug out occasionally but no longer real. Definitely not real. I was convinced for years that I could remember driving in the coach over the old bridge in Lucerne - the one with paintings in the roof. Since it is a pedestrian bridge, that memory must be complete fantasy.

My spotted postcard home, 1967

What made a truly lasting impression on me was the journey. Birds and film stars flew back then. We went in a couple of coaches, with two overnight stops. The most thrilling part of the entire holiday was waiting in the cold dark, at about 3am, with my parents, as the coach arrived to pick us up, and then arrival at Dover as the sun came up.

From the ferry, down across France to Reims, through farmland. First mild shock of the journey was the sight of farmers ploughing – or harrowing, or whatever it would have been at Easter – with horse-drawn ploughs (or harrows or whatever). The only horse-drawn anything I had seen before that was the cart of our local Steptoes, going up the road with a nasal call of “Ra’bong!” I was entering a time machine.

The greater shock was the graves. War graves. Regimented white markers, not in the vast cemeteries like Bayeux, but in smaller cemeteries, scattered everywhere, so casually embraced by the countryside. The first World War was no longer just a few stuttering clips of faded film and an amusing poster of Kitchener. It was blood and shattered bone absorbed into the soil, part of the land. That was one of the moments when it came home to me that “history” had once been “Now.”

On our second day, heading for Basel, we stopped briefly in Domrémy. My father liked George Bernard Shaw. I’d read his play, St Joan (I’d really like to see a modern version, set, maybe, in Afghanistan). Domrémy, despite its gift shops, was a reminder that St Joan had once been an actual girl, born there and deciding, at the age of 16, to fight rather than settle for life as a peasant wife, inspiring French resistance to English invaders, and being burned at the stake at the age of nineteen. I couldn’t get my head around it. Some of the school children on my trip were 16. Could they? Would they? Joan was a long time ago. People were different then.

We travelled on over the Vosges mountains, and stopped on a hairpin bend, looking down over steep rolling forests. The real purpose of our stop was to let several of the boys relieve themselves in the trees. But it happened to be the site of a memorial. A teacher explained that it was a memorial to some French resistance fighters who were captured and executed there by the Nazis. They included a father and son who were killed at the same age that my grandfather and one of my uncles were in 1967. Which made it strangely personal. And again, it rubbed in that history had been real people doing real things, not just tales in a storybook.

As children, we tend to believe that everything before us is fantasy. The second world war, to me, had been, like cowboys and injuns, simply the subject of black and white films with thrilling music on Sunday television. My parents had been through it, but that was when they were young, an enormously remote time. By the age of 12, though, it had dawned on me that it had been happening, bombs had been dropping, people had been dying less than ten years before I was born. I had been alive longer than the time between the end of the war and my birth. I was on its heels.

It was suddenly much closer and behind the heroism and the pantomime villainy of war films was a terrifying and horrible truth. The Nazis had been real, they had done unspeakable things, they were merciless and they were strong. It was easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to take their defeat for granted, but at the start of the war, it was their victory than seemed far more likely. Would my relatives, if they had lived south of the Channel instead of north, have dared to risk torture and death, to join the resistance against Nazi occupation? Would I dare? How would any of us react if confronted with challenges we’d hoped never to face.

I was standing where people were murdered because they had dared to resist, knowing the likely cost. It was that scene, on a forested hillside, that drilled deepest into me, out of all the delightful things I witnessed on that holiday. An unknown memorial on some anonymous hairpin bend in the middle of nowhere.

There’s nothing quite so useful as Google maps and Street View to help you find spots you can’t quite place. I knew it was in the Vosges mountains. Turns out, it’s quite easy to find. A very spectacular hairpin bend with the Memorial de Steingraben. I don’t know if it was identical in 1967, but the spot is certainly the same. A pity that I can’t find anything about it on the internet apart from pictures of the memorials. One day I’ll have to go back and pay my respects to the place and the people that had such an impact on me.

HEARTH AND HOME: Going Up In Smoke

 The Tudors didn’t invent brick, or chimneys, but they experienced a small revolution in house-building, by making common use of both.

Bricks, made of clay fired in a kiln, had been around since Roman times, but they had to be mass-manufactured so they had less appeal as a cheap and readily available material for building than timber, wattle and daub. The wealthier could afford them, and so, as the country grew wealthier so did more and more people. Ironically, the Black Death helped. It may have wiped out between a third and a half of the population, and put back its recovery by several centuries, but England began to move from being a third-world supplier of raw materials to a manufacturing economy (okay, the Welsh kept goats and Scotland was Scotland). There was less pressure on land and… well, let's just settle that the country got richer, with funds available to be spent on building more substantial and durable houses.

Despite the Wars of the Roses, Spanish Armadas, Civil Wars and general uprisings, the country also became a little more civilised. There were less anarchic warlords chasing each other around and laying siege to their castles, which were no longer quite so safe now that gunpowder was on the scene. So castles of stone with walls twelve feet thick gave way to country manors and palaces built of brick.

from the Tres Riches Heures de Duc de Berry. Quite a few chimneys

Chimneys had long existed in buildings that were several storeys high, or there would be no chance of heating them without choking everyone to death. Stone-built castles were one obvious example. In modest urban dwellings of only two floors, a smoke void at the rear would be sufficient, but for prosperous merchants who had no option but to build upwards rather than outwards, because of lack of ground space, chimneys were de rigeur.

Where there was space to expand, in the country, it was more normal, in Medieval times, for at least one hall to be left open to the rafters, to allow the smoke to rise and escape through high vents.

Bayleaf at the Weald and Downland museum

Brick changed this. One of its benefits was that, unlike timber, wattle and thatch, it didn’t catch fire, so chimneys became a must-have feature of every house but the humblest hovel. Even in half-timbered houses, brick allowed a chimney to be added.

New houses could be built around a huge central chimney with several flues, bread ovens, and enclosed hearths. The taller the flue the better the draw on the smoke. The need to have a hall open to the rafters, was gone, and that meant that upper floors could be inserted. Blackened timbers, nursing old soot, hidden away in closed lofts are a sure sign that a house once was once open to the rafters.

Brick could be moulded or cut, and chimneys were regarded as a sign of status, so naturally chimney pots became a means of boasting and an outlet for artistic exuberance. No small discreet pot for the Tudors, with a cowl to keep the rain and jackdaws out. Tall and extravagant was the order of the day. If you had it, flaunt it.

Even when building with stone, the chimney was a dominant feature that demanded attention.

While chimneys allowed for upper floors and carried the smoke away quite successfully, the hearth usually remained much as it had been when it had occupied the centre of the hall. A serious bonfire was needed to heat a good-sized room. In some cases, fireplace were large enough to be almost rooms in their own rights - inglenooks, where people could sit cosily round the fire.

fireplace at Cilewent farmhouse in St Fagan's Museum

Raising the fire on firedogs or grates allowed a better airflow into the flames, but it wasn’t until the end of the 18th century that improvements were made, with the Rumford fireplace, shallower and angled to reflect more heat into the room and siphon the smoke away more efficiently. Since I always try to mention Jane Austen, General Tilney boasts that he has improved the fireplace in Northanger Abbey. Catherine, who hankers after all things Gothic, is not impressed.

Fires were not only used for heating, but for cooking, of course. Bread oven and charcoal ranges for saucepans could be added, but generally kitchens had open fireplaces with assorted ironware – spits and cradles and hooks - for roasting and boiling.

one of several fireplaces in the Hampton Court kitchens

With the coming of the industrial revolution, coal replaced wood as the fuel. It produced very efficient heat but also unpleasant and noxious smoke. Roasting on a spit before an open fire was no longer possible without tainting the meat, so enclosed ranges were introduced, with an iron oven and, frequently, a water boiler with tap.

This did mean that the roast beef of Olde England became the baked beef of Modern England, which is mostly what is eaten today. They were roasting large joints on a spit before a wood fire in the Hampton Court kitchens when I last visited, but they wouldn’t let me try any. Health and Safety, I ask you.

Fancy visiting a few places?

Try

Weald and Downland Museum (near Chichester)

St Fagan's museum of Welsh life (Cardiff)

Hampton Court Palace.

HEARTH AND HOME: Timber!

 Here's another post about old houses.

Some places have a lot of easily splitable or workable stone, and if you had it, you used it, but elsewhere the most convenient material for building houses was wood. After the last ice-age, Britain was largely covered by woodland, although that was seriously reduced with the arrival of agriculture. As an aside, I say woodland rather than forest because in Norman times ‘forest’ was a term that referred to royal hunting grounds with gory penalties for poaching, rather than an impenetrable blanket of trees.

The woodland was largely oak and hazel which, when combined, made very effective structural materials that have come to epitomise Tudor England. Oak – especially heart of oak – is hard, strong, resistant to rot and woodworm and was used (is still used, if you can afford it) as the framework for buildings, with huge timbers pegged together, allowing a bit of charmingly quirky shifting and creaking.

Pegged timber framing illustrated at the Weald and Downland Museum

The spaces between the timbers were filled with woven split hazel wattle, liberally daubed with a mixture of clay, mud, straw and cowdung. Yummie.

wattle and daub illustrated at Tintern Abbey

One of the earliest types of timber construction used cruck beams, which made use of the natural curve of some massive timbers, taking the weight of the house from roof peak to ground. Use two or more pairs of crucks, as the basic support for a house, and build the rest around them.

A cruck-built house in Weobley, Herefordshire

Smaller curved timbers were also used to brace framework, and stop the whole thing from collapsing. Bayleaf, a satisfyingly elegant wealden house at the Weald and Downland museum illustrates the bracing beams, in a house that is more wattle and daub than heavy timber.

Bayleaf

But timbers were often used more liberally. Two variations were common. Box framing produced a grid of vertical and horizontal timbers. This was especially common in the west of the country.

Box-framed house in Eardisland, Herefordshire

In the east, close vertical studwork was favoured, as in this example at Ightham Mote in Kent.

The traditional image of Tudor England is of two-tone houses with startlingly black timbers and brilliant white plaster. In reality, untreated oak will weather over time to a silvery grey.

silvered timber on a cottage in Kent

Limewash or plaster was often used to protect not only the wattle and daub but the timbers too. This house in Eardisley (Herefordshire), illustrates both plastered and exposed timbers.

Plastering, especially in the east, was taken to decorative extremes with the art of pargetting, as with this example in Saffron Walden.

Ship’s timbers, blackened with tar, produced the picture-book image of black and white houses, especially in the west and Welsh marches. The contrast of timber and plaster was recognised as a forceful visual statement, leading to timbers being used not merely as supporting framework but as decoration in their own right. The Feathers Inn in Ludlow is a prime example.

The Feathers also illustrates how timber framing could allow houses to increase in height, expanding as they did so, with jutting floors. In many Medieval and Tudor towns, houses on either side of lanes could jut out so far they nearly met. Most examples were demolished and replaced in later times. One five-storey example that survived until the 18th century, to be recorded in an etching, stood on the corner of Chancery Lane in London, resembling the stern of a galleon.

By Tudor times, brick was becoming ever more common as a building material. Timber was still used as framework, but herringbone brickwork began to replace wattle and daub as the infill.

Brick infilling at the Weald and Downland museum.

The appeal of at least the appearance of half-timbering survived its decline as a genuine means of construction. The Gothic revival that began in the 18th century resulted in stone or brick houses being given a fake half-timbered facelift, like Plas Newydd, in Wales, a stone house “improved” by the Ladies of Llangollen.

The lure of Merrie England reached the spread of middle-class suburbia in the 1930s, with a rash of mock-tudoring. Never miss an opportunity to slap on a bit of timber.

Coulsdon Road, Couldson, Surrey

Recommended Place to Visit

Weald and Downland Museum, Chichester

HEARTH AND HOME: Ancient Houses

 I spent thirty years making hand-crafted, carved and turned miniature furniture. Well, you have to do something, don’t you? My business, Pear Tree Miniatures, came to an end because I reached retirement age but, more importantly, my eyes could no longer cope with the fine detail. But as I relinquished my business website, along with all the articles I had created on the subject of (British) old houses and furniture, I thought I would transfer much of it here, to my author’s website. So here’s the first instalment, about the very earliest houses in prehistoric times i.e. in times before written records.

Creswell Crags, image by Nigel Homer

There’s a lot of talk about the property market, regarding houses as investment, but down the centuries what a house really meant was a home. Homes start with shelter. In a society of hunter gatherers, permanent shelters are not required. Better to make do with a hastily raised shack of whatever is available, or maybe an available cave, if not already inhabited by something hairy with big teeth.

Starting about 4,000 BC in Britain, the neolithic era introduced farming, which meant settling down to tend a particular piece of land, so shelters were intended to be more permanent. Their inhabitants worked on turning them into an environment of their choosing, with furnishings and, most important, a hearth for cooking and for warm. The majority, built of wood, wattle or turfs, have long vanished into the dust but the homes of Skara Brae on the Orkneys were built of the only material available - stone, and were buried in sand that kept them surprisingly intact until are more than 4,000 years old, until a storm in 1850 uncovered them.

It wasn't just the houses of Skara Brae that were built of stone. It was the furniture too, which has survived to proved that they but they had it all, even toilets. The houses were all similar, half buried int the earth for extra warmth and protection, without windows, but with an all-important central hearth, a dresser facing the doorway, cupboards, bed frames. Pottery and beads have been found there.

Skara Brae, image by M J Richardson

The Bronze-age, starting in Britain in about 2,500 BC, didn't make significant changes to house styles, using materials readily available, and since they were usually wood or wattle, very little has survived other than post holes and burned hearths. An exception is the bronze-age village at Must Farm, in the fens, which was built on piles over water. When it caught fire, it collapsed into the water and was buried in silt, so for once timbers, wattle, thatch and textiles have survived.

Round houses continued to be the normal construction through the Iron Age (from about 800 BC in Britain), and through and beyond the Roman occupation. Since a reconstructed Iron-age village, Castell Henllys, is just around the corner from me, I have got to know them quite well.

Castell Henllys Chief's house

Round houses are big. The chief's house at Castell Henllys is 13.75 metres diameter (45 feet to those still using groats, furlongs, bushels and gills). There is just one room but areas are partitioned around the central hearth - areas for sleeping, for food preparation, for weaving etc.

Construction is all guesswork, of course, but based on the postholes left by the originals. The wall are woven with hazel wattle, finished with daub containing essential ingredients such as hair and urine.

The most important place in the house was the central hearth, providing heat and a source of cooking, although clay ovens could be built for baking. There is no hole for the smoke to escape. If there were, the house would probably burn down, set ablaze by flying sparks. Instead, the smoke is trapped at the top of the house, quenching sparks, before gradually filtering out through the thatch.

Then the Romans came, bringing with them roads, windows, upper floors, under-floor heating, pretty mosaics and nice square corners, at least for the wealthy Romanised Brits, living in villas.

North Leigh Roman Villa, image by Richard Croft

Most people probably continued living in round houses, and virtually nothing of what the Romans brought was adopted by later generations. It all disappeared into the earth... except for one thing: writing. As history is about written records, the arrival of the Romans marked the end of prehistory.

For more about Castell Henllys,

check out Tiny Homes of the Ancient World.

Places to visit

Skara Brae Prehistoric Village

Castell Henllys Iron-age Village

Find out more about Must Farm

The Aberystwyth Mystery

About forty years ago, my great-aunt died, the last of my grandparents' generation, and various keepsakes and trinkets came into our possession, including this box. A good, solid, well-made box, but there was, apparently, nothing of real interest in it, just a few beads and buttons.

At the bottom, presumably put there as extra lining, was a small sheet of yellowing paper, which we ignored. The box was used for various things over the years - playing cards, spare fuse wire, keys, monopoly houses fished out from under sofas and kept for safety until someone could remember where the monopoly box had been put, and those little bits you find that must surely be a part of something so you don't want to risk throwing them away in case they're vital.

Years later, I finally fished out the yellowing paper - no idea why - and discovered that it was a double page torn from a pocket notebook in which someone, in faded pencil, had kept a journal of a most exciting visit to Aberywyth. I have no idea who wrote it, or when. Early in the 20th century or maybe in Victorian times. My great aunt was born in 1900, but she lived and died in the Cardiff house that had also been occupied by her sister, my grandmother, and their parents, back to the 1880s, so it could have been written any time since then.

Some of it, I guess, was written on a knee, and is nearly illegible, but here is the thrilling transcript.

...........

Got to Aberys at 5.30, went to our Lodge — out for a walk, returned at 8.30, found our host drunk. Left there to look for another place, found one, returned to bed at 10.10pm. Could not sleep until morning. Found another young man in bed in the same room. Got up, had ham and eggs for breakfast. Went to the Congregational Chapel at 11.0am. Had a very good sermon but the singing was very inferior. Came home, had dinner, green peas and potatoes and mutton. Went out for a walk around promenade. Came to tea at 5.0. Went to the Welsh Baptist Chapel at 6.0. Very good sermon and splendid singing.

Rheidol Valley at Devil's Bridge (c) Trevor Rickard

Monday.
Went to Tregaron. Aber at 8.30, Llanrhystyd Road, Llanfair, Trawscoed, Strata Florida, Tregaron 9.30 am. Left Tregaron 4.5pm. (Ate?) at the Talbot Hotel, had a (illegible), and went to D. Rowlands the (illegible) Man. Returned at 5pm. Meet JJ and GH at the train.

Tuesday.
Went to Devil’s Bridge 11am in a cab. 5 of us had food at Devil’s B. Returned at 7pm from the most beautiful scenery I ever saw. Went to concert at 8pm in the Pier Pavilion.

Wens.
Went around town in the morning and to Constitution Hill at 2pm, a lovely place. Returned at 5pm and then to Flower show in the Pier pavilion. Grand show of vegetables and flowers.

Suit of clothes, 3 / 1 / 0½
For Constipation  6 / 5
For grave and T?  15 / 0
Miss Broad  10 / 6
Charles  5 / 0

........

This mysterious journal raises so many questions besides the identity of the writer. Why was he so anally obsessed with time-keeping, but couldn't think of a thing to say about Tregaron? Who was D Rowlands and what did he do? What exactly did the writer have at the Talbot Hotel? Who won the flower and veg show? And what did Miss Broad do to earn ten shillings and sixpence?
One thing is obvious, though. They certainly knew how to have a good time back then. Whenever Then was.

Dances on the Head of a Pin

Since I mentioned the monument in the middle of Haverfordwest in my last post, I thought I might as well slip in the short story I wrote about it.
So here it is...

DANCES ON THE HEAD OF A PIN

‘Well, man. And you are?’
    ‘I am? I don’t understand you, sir.’
    ‘I am asking your name, man. What is your name?’
    ‘Oh, I am William. That is my name, sir. Yes. William.’
    ‘Very well, William. Let us begin this examination.’

……….

There’s a lump of stone. A heavy piece of uninspiring Edwardian workmanship. You’ll find it in the cleft of the road, a little way below the church. It’s an unpleasant red, like steak that has begun to go off. It is polished like prized linoleum and shaped much like the pillar box that stands close by, along with a green plastic litter bin, a grey cubist telephone booth and a lamppost bearing traffic prohibitions. It’s surrounded by a low stone wall and a flight of slate-slab steps that connect one fork of the road to the other. Wall and steps provide a useful perch for the inevitable colonisers of street corners.
    Like the adolescent couple who sit there now, smoking. He finishes a can of lager and crushes it into a ball.
    ‘I’m doing a survey. Can I ask you some questions?’
    The boy shuffles away, along the step, but the girl is more curious. ‘Yeah, okay. Right. Go on then.’
    ‘Do you visit the town centre often?’
    ‘Yeah, well, sometimes.’
    ‘You live in the area?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘What concerns you?’
    ‘What you mean?’
    ‘What questions keep you awake at night? What tugs at your heart and soul? What worries you?’
    ‘Oh. Right.’ She nudges her boyfriend. She thinks she knows the answer I want. ‘You mean jobs and stuff, right?’
     ‘Aren’t no jobs,’ mutters the boy.
    ‘Jobs,’ I jot down.
    ‘And housing. Yeah, ‘cos we can’t find nothing.’
    ‘Housing.’
    ‘And…’ She’s being tentative, trying to gauge my reactions. ‘Is it drugs? Is that right?’
    ‘What about transubstantiation?’
    ‘You what?’
    ‘Transubstantiation.’
    ‘Is that like, trannies? Gays, like?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Don’t know nothing about it, then,’ says the boy. He’s had enough. He scrambles to his feet, dragging the girl with him, and tosses the crushed can over his shoulder. It lands at the base of the polished red stone, not far from the litter bin.

A businessman trots hurriedly down the steps, cutting off the corner as he hurries to his office.
    ‘Can I ask you your views on transubstantiation?’
    ‘No time, no time.’ He shoos me away.

An old lady, puffing up the hill, takes the opportunity to pause for breath.
    ‘Have you any thoughts about transubstantiation?’
    ‘No use asking me, love. Haven’t got any thoughts except about getting home and putting the kettle on. Electricity substations, was it? I don’t know anything about that, except my bills are too high.’
    She wheezes on her way. A lorry passes and a cloud of acrid fumes envelops the polished red stone.

……….

‘William, you must answer us,’ says Justice Horne. ‘Do you understand?’
    ‘Oh yes. You ask things and I answer.’
    ‘That is right. So listen to Father Gregory’s questions and answer him honestly.’
    ‘Yes. I am an honest man.’
    Father Gregory leans forward, eyes big and dark, almost pleading. ‘But are you an honest Christian, William? Do you believe in your soul’s salvation through the sacrifice of our Lord, Jesus Christ and the intercession of the Catholic church?’
    William gapes. ‘I go to church,’ he says, slowly.

    ‘Very good. And when you attend Mass, and the priest raises up the host, before the high altar of God, do you know what he is doing?’
    ‘He’s holding it up.’
    ‘Yes, yes, but this is important, William. The holy Eucharist. That is what we are speaking of. The bread and wine of the Mass. Do you believe that the blessed sacrament is truly the body and blood of Christ, Our Lord?’
    ‘Oh no,’ says William, cheerfully. ‘It is only bread and wine. I was told that.’
    A hiss.
    ‘Do you understand what you say, man?’
    ‘I know it is bread and wine.’
    ‘But in the course of the Mass, it becomes the actual flesh and blood of Christ, is that not so?’
    ‘No, no, I don’t eat man flesh. That would be wicked. It is only bread and wine. I was told.’
    ‘You were told wrong. Who told you this wicked lie?’
    ‘I was told. I must believe it is only bread and wine, or my soul will burn in Hell.’
    ‘You are wrong, William. Your soul will burn in Hell if you do not acknowledge, here, before us all, that the blessed sacrament is the very body and blood of Christ. Say it!’
    William’s slack lower lip hardens and juts out. His dazed eyes narrow as he tenses with a flood of obstinacy. It is, doubtless, the unthinking obstinacy that comes to his rescue when he is jostled in the street, or when bullies order him around. ‘Will not! It is only bread and wine. I was told.’
    Father Gregory sits back, shaking his head, his face racked with misery.
    Justice Horne knits his brows as he surveys William. ‘A sad business. Take him back to his cell. We can do nothing with him.’

Father Gregory clasps his hands in fervent, silent prayer. Justice Horne waits for him to finish, then crosses himself.
    ‘A bad business.’
    ‘A terrible business, Justice. A terrible heresy that will claim countless souls if it is not rooted out.’
    ‘He is a simpleton, of course.’
    ‘Clearly, but a misguided one, and those who taught him to spout these vile lies will surely feel God’s wrath. But it is his soul that is our business now.’
    ‘He is a mere child in a man’s body, is he not? Talium est enim regnum caelorum. Such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, he is a child. Sinite parvulos et nolite eos prohibere ad me venire. Suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto me. It is for us to lead him back to the true God, and let the simple soul enter the gates of Paradise.’
    ‘Quite so,’ says Justice Horne. ‘A child, most dear to God. Better to have found a home and refuge in a monastery than be cast adrift in this busy and relentless world.’
    ‘Indeed. In the bosom of Mother Church, he could have found true sanctuary.’
    ‘But alas, there are no monasteries now, for such simple souls and it is left to us to give him peace – us to decide what must be done with him.’
    ‘Yes. A solemn duty.’
    ‘We’ll burn him, of course.’
    ‘Of course! He must burn. Better for him to face the agonising purification of the flames now and, in them, find repentance, than to face the fires of Hell for all eternity. I would be betraying my duty for the care of his soul, otherwise. For his own salvation, he must burn.’
    Justice Horne nods politely. ‘And for the salvation of this land – for the sake of peace and order. As our noble Queen Mary and the law have decreed, so shall it be enforced. Heresies will be rooted out. We cannot permit beliefs contrary to the law—’
    ‘To the teachings of Holy Mother Church.’
    ‘To the teachings of the church, as decreed by the law. There must be one understanding of truth in this state, or how can the centre hold? If it were seen that a simple man could defy the law, with wayward views, there would be anarchy. There would be chaos. The rabble would rise and gentlemen would never be safe again. Peaceful order is everything and it is for us to enforce. If only to teach others the wisdom of obedience, he must burn.’
    ‘Amen.’

‘William. Look there. Do you see the stake they have prepared for you? The chains to bind you to it? Do you see the faggots that will be piled around you? Do you hear the baying crowd, come to see you burn?’
    William stares, vacantly. Does he understand?
    ‘Repent, William. Stand up before this crowd and recant your heresies. Acknowledge the teachings of the true church, as established by the law. Tell them you admit the truth, that the bread and wine of the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ. Tell them that, William, and you will not burn. Do you want to burn, William?’

    ‘No! I don’t want to burn. I don’t like being burnt.’
    ‘So tell them.’
    ‘But if I tell a lie, I will burn in Hell, forever. I don’t want that. No. This will be quicker, will it not?’
    ‘So be it, William. If you will not repent… Take him. Let us do this thing, before the crowd grows restless.’

‘These clouds look black, Father Gregory. Is that a drop of rain? I hope so. Better that sodden faggots will smoke and smother him. I confess, I take no pleasure in the sound of these screams.’
    ‘No, Justice. Don’t pray for rain. Pray rather that the fire burns and his screams continue in unabated agony to the end, for in them pour forth his pleas for mercy to Our Lord and his blessed mother, who will lead his soul to salvation. Only thus is a soul saved and the truth maintained.’
    ‘Even thus,’ agrees Justice Horne, settling back in his chair, to watch to the finish.

……….

Two middle-aged women, well-dressed, heels clicking, are winding up the hill, pausing at the lump of stone.
    ‘Excuse me, would you be willing to answer a question or two? It will take no time at all.’
    One looks wary, lips pinched, prepared to brush me aside, but the other is too polite. I don’t look like a mugger, or foreign, so perhaps I am all right.
    ‘Well, maybe. What is it about?’
    ‘Could you tell me your views on transubstantiation?’
    ‘On, er…’ They look at each other. The reluctant one is unwilling to voice her ignorance. The polite one gives an embarrassed laugh. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what that is.’
    ‘It’s something to do with the EU,’ snaps the other. ‘More typical bureaucracy.’
    ‘Not quite,’ I say. ‘Do you go to church?’
    The reluctant one nods. The other repeats her embarrassed laugh. ‘Not at often as I should.’
    ‘Transubstantiation is the belief that, in the celebration of the Eucharist, the bread and wine becomes the actual body and blood of Christ.’
    ‘Oh. Well. I’ve never really thought about it. Um. Why?’
    ‘You will have noticed this monument here.’ I point to the lump of stone. ‘It commemorates the burning at the stake of a man who refused to accept the principle of transubstantiation.’
    Their gaze follows my pointing finger and they read. “On this spot, William Nichol, of this town, was burnt at the stake for the truth. April 9th 1558.”
    ‘Well I never. Horrible. I mean, horrible to think they did things like that.’
    ‘The priest who helped to condemn him died a martyr, certain of his place in heaven. He was hanged, drawn and quartered, for refusing to deny transubstantiation.’
    ‘Oh nasty. I don’t know which is worse.’
    ‘This burning is listed in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. “The suffering and martyrdom of William Nichol, put to death by the wicked hands of the papists.”’
    ‘Well, fancy!’ says the polite one.
    ‘Oh, papists,’ says the other. ‘I don’t care much about them. It’s the Muslims I worry about. And the Poles.’
    ‘Of course,’ I say, and let them depart.
    I look again at the lump of stone. A small dog, running loose, is sniffing around it. He cocks a leg, pees and scampers on.
    William Nichol’s ashes were dispersed long ago, mingling with the stardust of creation. So too were the remains of Father Gregory. Different agonies, but the same stardust. Whereas I – I merely fell asleep in my bed, having gone on, for many years, to administer justice in the name of Good Queen Bess, the Anglican communion and the laws of the land.

    I don’t seem to have mingled with anything. I linger. It’s the world around me that shimmers and transforms. Did the centre hold? It shifts. I no longer know where it lies. What is it we believe, these days? I am out of touch. Some days, I no longer remember why I had to burn William Nichol, but I know it must have been important. So I come here, clip board in hand to remind myself. Of course he had to burn. Didn’t he?
    No matter. Times have moved on. There will always be another cause worth dying for. Worth killing for.
    Who shall we burn today?

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