A Finer End

Simon Fitzstephen sat next to Jack Montfort at the round table in Fitzstephen’s sitting room, translating aloud what Montfort had just scrawled on the page in his notebook. A fire crackled in the grate, John Rutter’s arrangement of William Byrd’s Miserere mei played softly on the stereo, and they had drawn the heavy velvet drapes against the coming of evening.

Having invited Jack on the pretext of continuing their genealogical research, Simon had encouraged him to try asking Edmund for information once more. Fitzstephen was convinced that the presence of the others in the group hampered the automatic-writing process: it looked as though the results of this session might prove him right.

Thurstan had been the first Norman abbot at Glastonbury, brought from Caen in France by King William after the Conquest to succeed Aethelnoth. By Simon’s reckoning, Edmund must have been in his early teens when Thurstan became abbot in 1077.

Jack’s hand again moved across the paper. The church was never finished … it was cursed. One day the Abbot went into the Chapter House and spoke against the monks. He sent for his men and they fell upon us fully armed. We scattered in terror. Some fled into the church, thinking to be safe there. But evil … that day … the Frenchmen broke into the choir.… Some shot arrows towards the sanctuary so that they stuck in the Cross that stood above the altar. Many … monks were wounded … three were killed. Blood came from the altar onto the steps, and from the steps onto the paving stones.…

“Where were you?” Simon asked softly.

I hid in the scriptorium, among the books. But I saw … afterwards. I washed the bodies of the dead … and wept for them. I weep still for what the Abbot stole from us that day.

“What was that? What did the abbot take?”

But Jack’s hand rested unmoving on the paper, his fingers slack, and after a moment he blinked.

“Get anything?” he asked, laying down the pen and stretching.

“See for yourself.” Simon paced while Jack read, for while Jack’s translations had improved, he still didn’t think as easily in Latin as Simon did.

Jack came to the end of the page and looked up. “There’s something here I don’t understand. Why did Thurstan ‘speak against’ the monks? Had they done something wrong?”

“No. Although Thurstan was a godly man, and a builder, like all the Normans, he made the monks stop the Gregorian chant that had been part of the Abbey’s tradition from time immemorial, substituting a French chant by William of Fécamp. When the monks protested, Thurstan attacked them. You must understand that this substitution was no minor thing to the monks—the chant was part of the very fabric of their daily lives.”

“And Edmund witnessed this.…” Jack mused. “Maybe it was even more than that.… Do you remember when Winnie said that as she listened to Edmund’s description of the monks’ service she felt an immense sense of joy and harmony? She told me later that she had seen a vision, that she’d been in the church and heard them singing.…”

Would wonders never cease? thought Simon. The pragmatic Winifred Catesby was the last person he’d have expected to have a vision. Aloud, he said, “She heard them singing.… Do you suppose … Could it be the chant that Edmund wants us to restore?”

“It sounds a bit far-fetched. The chants must be well documented—”

“No, wait.” Something nipped at Simon’s memory. He went to the bookcase and ran his finger along the spines until he found the volume he wanted, but the mere act of touching it triggered his recall and he held the book, unopened. “There’s a Celtic tradition that Joseph of Arimathea brought with him to Britain a twelve-part chant that had been secretly passed down through the centuries from pre-Christian temple priests in Egypt. Although no one is certain what they sang at Glastonbury, some sources say it was the one place where this chant was maintained in its purest form by a perpetual choir.… What if it was this chant that Thurstan forbade?”

“And the monks would have risked their lives for this?” Jack’s doubt was evident.