The White Cross by Richard Masefield Page A

YOU EXPECT TO GIVE A KING OF ENGLAND GUIDANCE IN SUCH MATTERS, IF NOT YOURSELF, ARCHBISHOP?’ the uncompromising Voice of God ENQUIRES . ‘MY SERVANT BECKET WASN’T SLOW, YOU MAY RECALL, TO BRING KING HENRY TO ACCOUNT.’
    Which is a fair point, the archbishop thinks; and before his courage can forsake him, Baldwin takes the plunge.
    ‘King Richard take good heed,’ he warns in his best sermonising tone. ‘A king is only fit to govern others while he governs in himself the vices of vainglory and impiety which ever have beset the princes of this world.’
    The hollow spaces of the Abbey lend depth to his thin voice. ‘King Richard I forbid you by the bones of the Confessor to assume this honour in a state of pride.’
    King Richard’s sandy lashes part. Two furrows of displeasure crease the royal brow. Green eyes lock with grey.
    ‘ Forbid , Archbishop?’ he stonily enquires.
    Even standing in his mitre, scarce taller than his monarch firmly seated, Baldwin speaks for once without apology.
    ‘By the Power of God that’s vested in me, I say you will assume the crown in true humility,’ he states flatly. ‘Or not at all.’
    He waits, and for what seems an age to all attending there’s silence in the Abbey. Church over Crown? Crown over Church? Which is it to be?
    And still he waits.
    Then Richard’s overtaken by a spasm of pure rage that blanches his knuckles on the throne and leaves him shaking with the effort of control.
    ‘With God’s grace, Baldwin, and by my mother’s womb I will uphold against all hazards everything I’ve sworn,’ he finally asserts, ‘And that’s how I will be crowned – if not by your hand, priest, then by my own!’ With which he rises, seizes Saint Edward’s heavy crown and swings it high above his head; the purple stole drawn with it looping from his outstretched arms.
    As the King stands poised to crown himself; godlike, oblivious to any power or glory but his own, Baldwin’s reminded of the old dark legend of Anjou – sees not a Christian prince, but the descendant of a fallen angel. He thinks of Lucifer in the Book of Isaiah: ‘I will raise my throne above the stars of God!’
    By the power that’s vested in me, I forbid you to assume this honour in a state of pride!
    Eyes closed, he says it silently this time through God’s own agency of prayer. Remember, at at coronation a new king must become the virtues that he swears to.
    ‘No please…’ Willing Richard to believe it, he extends his own thin hands to take the crown, when all at once the little bells suspended from its golden arches begin to ring.
    A muscle twitches in the crimson flush across the King’s well covered cheeks, and it becomes apparent that he’s shaking like a jelly.
    ‘Well then get on with it, you pious fool,’ he growls.
    ‘O Lord, the King rejoices in Your strength;
    How great his joy in the victories You award!
    For You have granted him his heart’s desire
    And have not denied the prayer of his lips;
    You have endowed him with the richest blessings
    And set a crown of purest gold upon his head!’
    The choir exults as Baldwin, with gravity and even more pronounced relief, reclaims the shaking crown to set it, gold on gold, on Richard’s head. But when the King resumes his throne his face is bathed in sweat. He shakes so violently that two earls have to climb the steps to hold the crown from either side and stop it falling to the floor.
    ‘Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!’
    A thousand voices batter the stone cliffs of the Abbey walls. Its bells announce King Richard’s crowning to the populace beyond. Then all the bells of all the other churches in the square mile of London jangle their response; disturbances which in their turn set every city dog hysterically barking, clatter pigeons from the Abbey roof – and finally dislodge a sleeping bat from some tenebrous crevice high up in the lantern. Disorientated, the tiny creature flutters down a rainbow shaft of