Part 4

“Those are the palaces of the great nobles,” Godmother told her. “The one we are passing, is called the _Savoy_, and it belongs to John of Gaunt.”

“Why, there’s the Savoy Hotel, and the Savoy Theatre in the Strand now!” exclaimed Betty. “We passed them to-day.”

“Yes, they stand on part of that very ground where now you see this grand palace. Nearly every street leading from the Strand to the river still bears the name of some nobleman’s palace, and shows where it stood. Essex Street, Buckingham Street, Cecil Street—you noticed some of them this morning? They all mark the site of some great house, now vanished. Many of them—in this reign of Richard the Second—are not yet built, and some of these at which we are looking, will be pulled down and _re_-built before they are finally destroyed. We are only in the fourteenth century as yet, remember.”

“This Savoy Palace is splendid!” Betty cried with enthusiasm. “Look, Godmother. There are ladies and gentlemen walking on the terrace. Oh, how beautifully they are dressed. Aren’t the colours lovely? I do wish we had dresses like that now, don’t you? Do look at that lady with a thing like a sugar-loaf on her head, and a gauzy veil floating from it.”

“Yes, the costumes of this fourteenth century are certainly beautiful,” Godmother agreed. “Now you will understand why the English in the fourteenth century had the reputation for being the most gaily dressed people in Europe.”

“They look simply lovely on that terrace, and it’s such a beautiful house—that Savoy Palace, isn’t it?”

“It’s a wonderful looking place,” agreed Godmother. “I don’t think King John of France had a bad sort of prison, do you?”

“King John?” Betty looked puzzled.

“Don’t you remember how he was taken prisoner by John of Gaunt’s brother—the Black Prince—at Poitiers, and how because he was unable to pay his ransom, when he was set free, he returned to London like an honourable gentleman, and lived here, at the Savoy, till his death?”

“And that isn’t so very long ago, is it? I mean, counting that we’re in the fourteenth century now?”

“Twenty years ago. The Black Prince, King Richard’s father, has been dead about ten years, and he must often have come to this Savoy Palace to see John of Gaunt, his brother, and his so-called prisoner King John, of whom every one was very fond.”

They had fortunately lingered some time before the palace of the Savoy, to allow the Black monks to land at steps near it. Afterwards there was a long wait while the waterman who rowed the boat, followed them up a narrow lane over-arched with white hawthorn, and was seen to enter a little house with tiny latticed-paned windows and a swinging sign-board above its porch.

“That’s a tavern, and he’s gone to drink what he no doubt calls ‘a stoup of wine,’” said Godmother. “The muddy lane there, all overhung with trees, is now one of the narrow streets near the Savoy Hotel, leading into the Strand. At this moment of the _twentieth_ century, it is blocked with motor omnibuses and taxicabs!” she added with a smile.

Betty was glad of the delay, for it gave her time to look long at the stately palace, and at the other great houses lining the right bank of the river, with their backgrounds of gardens and orchards melting into green fields and woods where now, streets and innumerable buildings stretch for miles and miles. Presently the boatman returned, whistling a cheerful air, and wiping his lips on the sleeve of his leather jerkin. Springing into the boat he began to row very quickly, and in a few minutes, as it seemed, Godmother said, “Here we are at the Palace of Westminster.”

All Betty could see from the river, was a strong brick wall, turreted and pierced with gates.

“The Palace of Westminster? There isn’t one now, is there?” she asked, as they went up steps from the river.

“Not in reality. There is no actual palace here in our time. Yet because it stands on the same ground, another name for our modern Houses of Parliament is ‘The Palace of Westminster.’”

“Why, yes! The wide road outside it, is called Old Palace Yard, of course. I remember now. But there isn’t any of the old palace left, is there?”

“There is just one building left of what was the home of all the Kings of England from long before William the Conqueror till the time of Henry the Eighth.”

They were passing under the arch of the gateway at the moment—a fine stone gateway.

“This has only just been built by the present King,” Godmother observed. “It is quite a new gate, as you see.”

But Betty gave a cry of amazement when on passing through the gate she found herself in what was practically a little walled town, apart from the rest of London. The wall enclosed not only the Palace, and the great Abbey, but also little streets full of houses in which lived carpenters, stonemasons, armourers, jewellers, the makers of priestly robes, goldsmiths, blacksmiths—in fact, traders of every kind who worked either for the Palace or the Abbey, or for both.

Her thoughts went back to the swampy island of a thousand years ago. Here she was, standing on the very same isle. Yet how changed! Instead of a forest of reeds and bushes, here was a stately Palace and a still more stately Abbey. Busy men and women lived, where formerly only birds and water-rats made their homes. The island had, in fact, become a little town, divided from the greater city by massive walls.

“We are facing the Palace now,” said Godmother presently. “Do you see anything about it that looks familiar?”

“Why, surely that’s Westminster Hall?” Betty exclaimed after a moment, pointing to a long steep-roofed building in the midst of towers and pinnacles that were strange to her.

“Yes, and the only part of the Old Palace that will remain to the time in which you and I live. It was built by William Rufus, so it is old, even in this fourteenth century.”

“But it looks so new.”

“That’s because it has just been altered and almost rebuilt by the King now reigning. Let us go and look at the beautiful inner roof of the Hall.”

“The next time I see it, when we’ve moved on to our own time, it won’t look like this,” Betty observed, gazing up at its rafters as they entered Westminster Hall. “It will be all dark and old, won’t it? But it will be awfully interesting to think I saw it just after it was rebuilt and improved.”

“That’s Richard’s coat of arms up there below the line of windows,” said Godmother. “You see the white hart is repeated again and again. Don’t forget to look out for it when you see this Hall again—in ordinary circumstances, I mean, without the ‘magic.’ And don’t forget either that, except for the Tower, there’s no building in our history that has seen so much misery,” she added. “Think of all the famous people who have been tried here, and condemned to death.”

“Poor Charles the First was one, wasn’t he? Oh, Godmother, isn’t it strange to think it hasn’t happened yet—and won’t happen for—let me see?—about two hundred years!”

“Now for just a glimpse of the Abbey,” said Godmother after a moment, “and then we’ll slip back into our own day for a little while. It won’t do to see too much all at once.”

“I could stay for ever in this London!” Betty declared. “You’ll bring me back again, won’t you, Godmother? I mean to just this time in the fourteenth century. It’s so frightfully interesting.”

She had turned round to gaze at the beautiful Abbey in front of the Palace, the very Abbey so near to which her godmother lived. But at first sight she scarcely recognized it as the old grey place she knew, blackened by the years and the smoke of ages.

“It looks so clean and white,” she said. “And where are the towers that you see when you come up Victoria Street? And where is Henry the Seventh’s Chapel?”

“Now there’s a silly child!” cried Godmother. “How could there be a Henry the Seventh’s Chapel when we are only at the reign of Richard the Second—nearly a hundred years before Henry the Seventh reigned?”

“I forgot,” said Betty meekly.

“As for the towers you mention, they weren’t built till the eighteenth century, long after Henry the Seventh’s time.”

“But though the Abbey looks different, it’s quite as _big_ as it is now, don’t you think so?”

“Yes, it covers quite as much ground, though, as you see, a good deal of it looks different from the Abbey of our day. That’s because from time to time, certain parts have been pulled down, and built in another way. We’ll sit down here in the porch a moment and watch the people going in.”

As they rested in the deep sculptured porch with the image of the Virgin above it, men, women, and children of all ranks were continually entering or leaving the Church. Now it was a soldier in a tight leather cap, leather tunic or jerkin, and long hose. Now a great lady arriving in a litter borne by serving-men from which she alighted in the porch, and swept into the Church. One of these wore a short velvet jacket edged with ermine, over a long silken skirt. Her hair was twisted up into bosses on either side of her ears, and covered with a golden net, and her cloak, kept together in front with a jewelled clasp, trailed behind her as she walked.

Following her came a boy, perhaps her son, as fantastically dressed as the young man Betty had recently seen on London Bridge. All of the people, she noticed, crossed themselves as they passed the statue of the Virgin on entering the Abbey, and this reminded her that England was still a Roman Catholic country.

She thought she would never be tired of watching the scene before her, nor of letting her eyes wander over all the monasteries and gardens enclosed by the walls of Westminster.

The bells began to ring for service within the Abbey.... They were still ringing when she found the white-panelled walls of Godmother’s parlour round her, and rubbed her eyes as though to clear them of a vision....

“The Abbey bells!” exclaimed Godmother. “Ringing just as they rang long ago, when Chaucer was alive.”

“You said we might perhaps see him,” said Betty. “But we didn’t.” She knew something about Chaucer, for she had read one or two of the stories from the “Canterbury Tales,” and now that she had looked at London as it was when he lived in it, she was anxious to see the great poet himself.

“Plenty of time. Didn’t I promise you should go back again? As soon as we’ve taken a little walk about the Westminster of to-day, we can slip into fourteenth-century London as soon as we please.”

“The best of this magic is that it doesn’t _really_ take any time, and yet it seems that we’ve been away hours and hours!” remarked Betty, as they turned out of Godmother’s quiet road.

They were in Victoria Street now, with the Houses of Parliament shutting out the view of the river, and on their right the Abbey. There was a roar of traffic, and all the ground on the left was covered with great modern buildings.

Betty remembered the walled town she had just seen, with its quaint houses, its shops full of workmen, its gardens and monasteries. Nothing of that olden Westminster remained, except the Abbey itself and Westminster Hall, just opposite to her, with its sloping roof, which at the moment modern workmen, standing upon scaffolding, were busy repairing.

She gave a long sigh. “Isn’t it _wonderful_ to think it has changed like this,” she said. “Even the Abbey doesn’t look the same because of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at the back there and the towers in front,—which weren’t built the last time we saw it.”

“I might go on telling you about that Abbey and its changes, all day,” was Godmother’s answer. “There’s so much to learn about it that I only propose to talk about a little bit at a time. We’ll just walk through it now, and out into the cloisters.”

Betty followed her, looking up at the beautiful soaring arches as they passed quickly across the Church and out at a little leather-covered door into a wonderful colonnade, enclosing a square of emerald-green grass.

“This is a very, very old part of the building,” said Godmother. “But long before even this colonnade, or cloister as it is called, was built, there was a church here. Sit down, and I’ll tell you a pretty story about the first Abbey. Now,” she began, “you must think of the swampy island you saw in Roman times, and remember that our feet are on that very island now. Well, as you know, time passed, the Romans went, and our ancestors, the first English people came. They were heathens, worshipping wild gods like Thor and Woden, of whom you may have heard. Then, after years had gone by, they were converted to Christianity by Roman monks, and Sebert, one of their kings (who was really only what we should call the chief of a warlike tribe), built a church on this very spot, which though it had become by this time fairly dry, was so covered with rough thickets that it was called the Isle of Thorns, or Thorney Island. The church, which we must picture to ourselves as a very simple building, was to be called _St. Peter’s_. At last it was finished and ready to be consecrated, that is, dedicated to God, and the Bishop Mellitus, who was the first Bishop of London, was coming to perform the ceremony.

“Now the day before the consecration, was a Sunday, and in the twilight that Sunday evening a certain fisherman called Edric, was busy with his nets on the banks of this Isle of Thorns, when he saw near the newly-built church of St. Peter a mysterious light. Presently he saw approaching, a venerable-looking man who asked to be rowed across a stream which lay between the shores of the island and the church. Edric consented, and on reaching the opposite bank, followed the stranger towards the church. On the way the old man struck the ground twice with his staff, and to the fisherman’s amazement, each time, a spring of water gushed forth from the earth. But his wonder was increased when he saw the new building a blaze of light, and on entering, found it radiant with angels, each of whom held a candle. Then in the midst of the heavenly light the old man went through all the ceremonies of consecrating the church, while above its roof in a shining stream, Edric saw angels ascending and descending.

“When this lovely vision had disappeared, Edric rowed the old man back over the stream, and was bidden to tell the bishop next day that the church was already consecrated by no less a person than St. Peter himself! He was also to tell the bishop that the church must be called the Abbey of Westminster.

“The old man, who was no other than St. Peter, also said that Edric might always be sure of catching many fish, on two conditions. First that he should never again work on a Sunday, and secondly, that he never forgot to take a certain quantity of the fish to the monks of the Abbey.

“So next day, when Bishop Mellitus came to perform the ceremony of consecration, Edric told him all that had happened, and showed him the crosses on the doors, and the wax spilt on the floor from the candles the angels had held, and the springs of water (which, as wells, remain to this day). The bishop was convinced of the truth of the fisherman’s story, and changed the name of the island from Thorney, to Westminster. So in remembrance of this appearance of St. Peter to Edric, the Thames fishermen for nearly four hundred years from that time, always brought a tithe of their fish to the Collegiate Church of St. Peter in Westminster, for that is the full and proper name of Westminster Abbey.”

“It’s a nice story,” said Betty. “The fisherman in it reminds me of the time when we came to this place in Roman days in a fisherman’s boat. But that was long before it was called Thorney Island, of course.”

“Well,” continued Godmother, “part of what I’ve just told you is only a legend. Now we come to real history. That first church built by Sebert, stood here for about four hundred years. Then Edward the Confessor came to the throne. He, as his name tells you, was a very pious king, and he had made a vow to God to build a great church. So he pulled down the one already standing on Thorney Island (as it was still called by the people) and on its foundations built another huge one—quite as large as this present Abbey. It was finished just before he died, and the very next year, in 1066, William the Conqueror took possession not only of the palace in which Edward the Confessor and the kings before him, had lived (that old palace we have so lately seen, you know)—but of the great new church belonging to it.

“It stood as Edward the Confessor left it, for two hundred years. Then King Henry the Third pulled nearly all of it down, so that very little is left of the first ancient building now. The Chapel of the Pyx, which we will see one day, is, however, a part of Edward the Confessor’s Abbey, and so are some of the walls of this very cloister we are in.

“Edward the First, Henry’s son, went on with the re-building, and while Chaucer was alive, a great deal was added to it. The famous Jerusalem Chamber, for instance, was only just finished when you saw the Abbey by magic this morning, and so was the greater part of this cloister in which we are sitting.”

“No wonder the Abbey looked all bright and new,” said Betty. “What is the _Jerusalem_ Chamber?”

“We’ll go and see it, and I’ll tell you about it when we’re there.”

They went through a little ancient court into a beautiful old room with a stained-glass window at one end.

“Chaucer may have seen that glass,” said Godmother, “for it was painted long before he was born. This room was built during his lifetime, for the use of the Abbot’s guests when they came to stay with him. It was probably called the Jerusalem Chamber because there used to be tapestry on its walls showing the history of Jerusalem. And about that there is a curious story.”

“Do tell me!” Betty urged.

“I will, when we go home. Or rather, I’ll let Shakespeare tell you, because he has used the story in one of his plays.

“Many things have happened in this Jerusalem Chamber from the days when Chaucer saw it, up to our own time. Not so very long ago, for instance, when the Bible was revised—(that is, translated again, and much of the wording altered) the learned men who worked at it sat here.... Now we’ve seen as much of the Abbey as was in existence when Richard the Second was king. But of course an enormous amount of its history comes after his time.”

“Does the story of the Jerusalem Chamber come after?” Betty asked.

“Yes, but so soon afterwards that we’ll read it in the play of _Henry the Fourth_.”

“He was the very next king after Richard, wasn’t he? Oh yes, of course. He was the man who usurped the throne, and had poor Richard murdered.”

Directly they reached the parlour at home, Betty ran to the bookcase for a “Shakespeare,” and Godmother turned to the play.

“I must tell you what had happened before the few last words which are all I’m going to read!” she said. “King Henry the Fourth was setting out on a journey to the Holy Land, and just before he started, he went to pray in the Abbey. But there, before the altar, he was suddenly taken ill, and became unconscious. They carried him into the Abbot’s guest-chamber—the Jerusalem Room which you’ve just seen, but later moved him to another apartment. There when he was dying, remembering the place to which he had first been carried from the Abbey, he said:

‘Doth any name particular belong Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?’

and Earl Warwick answered:

‘’Tis called _Jerusalem_, my noble lord.’

“Then the king, remembering a prophecy about the place of his death, replied:

‘Laud be to Heaven!—even there my life must end. It hath been prophesied to me many years, I should not die but in Jerusalem; Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land:— But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie; In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.’”

“And that’s true? He really _did_ die there?” asked Betty.

“Yes. So in a way the old prophecy, you see, was fulfilled, for he died in a room _called_ ‘Jerusalem.’ There too, according to the old story which Shakespeare also tells in the same play, Prince Henry, when he was watching by his father’s bedside, put on the crown he was afterwards to wear as Henry the Fifth. But we’re getting too far away from the days of Richard the Second, and as we’re going back to them as soon as we’ve had tea, I mustn’t confuse you.”

Later on in the afternoon, when the magic rite of book and chain had been duly performed, to her great delight Betty found herself again standing at the gate leading on to London Bridge. After a short interval of modern days, she was delighted to be once more back in the Middle Ages.

“You remember _Thames_ Street?” said Godmother,—“the street so crowded this morning with motor lorries that we had to turn out of it? Well, here it is!”

She pointed to the entrance of a lane open on one side to the clear sparkling river, and on the other lined with the quaintest of what Betty called “fairy-book” houses. They were built of wood, with timber beams across the front, each story projecting farther than the one below it, so that the topmost windows hung far out above the street below. Boards painted with various signs, such as fiery dragons, golden fish, and green bushes, swung over the dark little shops on the ground floor. The street upon which they opened, was muddy and unpaved, but it was filled with a bustling crowd of gaily-dressed people. Recalling the Thames Street of this morning’s visit, the river hidden by enormous warehouses, motor vehicles blocking the roadway, Betty could scarcely believe this to be the same spot.

“I want you to look at that house,” said Godmother, pointing to one of the gabled dwellings that had a wine shop below it. “Because there, Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet, was born and lived for some years. His father, as you may guess, by the sign over the door, was a wine merchant—or _vintner_ as he would say.”

“Doesn’t Chaucer live there still?”

“No, he’s an old man now, and he’s living in that little walled town of Westminster, close to the Abbey. The year we’re in—1388—is the last year of his life, and he has still to write his most famous poem.”

“That’s the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ I know!”

Just at the moment, and before Godmother could answer, there was a stir and commotion in Thames Street. Children began to run, shouting to one another, “The Pilgrims!” “The Pilgrims come!” and there was a general rush in one direction.

Betty and her godmother followed the crowd. “Let us stand here in the middle of the bridge, outside the Chapel of St. Thomas,” suggested Godmother. “Then we shall see them come in at the north gate and go out at the one at the other end of the bridge, into Southwark.”

They had just taken their places, when an elderly quiet-looking man dressed in a long brown garment, with a hood whose long peak hung to his shoulder, came up, stepping softly, and stood beside them.

“Do you know who this is?” Godmother asked. “No other than Geoffrey Chaucer, the great poet!”

Betty was torn between her desire to look at him, and her excitement at the approach of a train of people on horseback, who now came clattering through the gateway on to the bridge.

“This is a company of pilgrims just setting out on their journey to Canterbury to visit the tomb of St. Thomas à Becket,” Godmother told her. “Do you notice how intently the poet is watching them?”

Betty glanced at him, and saw him smiling quietly as the procession passed by.

“He will go home presently and perhaps begin to write the ‘Canterbury Tales’ this very day, making an Introduction or _Prologue_ to it which will describe all those people on horseback just as you see them.”