YOUNGER GURNEY:
This is the City of London, sire.
ELEVENTH OF FEBRUARY, 1326.
London
Soldiers and crowd before Westminster.
FIRST: The eleventh of February will count among the most important days in England’s history.
SECOND: A man’s toes freeze on such a night as this.
THIRD: And we have waited here for seven hours.
SECOND: Is Ned already in there?
FIRST: He must pass by to go to Parliament.
SECOND: There’s a light again up there in Westminster.
THIRD: Will the Eel bring him round?
FIRST: I’ll lay a silver shilling on the Eel.
SECOND: And I two shillings on Ned.
FIRST: What’s your name?
SECOND: Smith. And yours?
FIRST: Baldock.
THIRD: It’ll snow for sure about morning.
Westminster
Edward, blindfold, the two Gurneys.
ELDER GURNEY:
Are you content to be at last at the Eel’s?
EDWARD:
Aye. Where is the Eel?
YOUNGER GURNEY:
That you’ll soon see.
Exeunt the two Gurneys.
Enter Mortimer.
MORTIMER:
As London’s sweaty market has so forced matters
That my head for these few minutes almost hangs
Upon a yea or nay from this man’s humbled lips
So from him in his weakened state will I
Rip out this yea like a tooth.
Takes off Edward’s blindfold.
EDWARD:
Is this Westminster and are you the Eel?
MORTIMER:
So men call me. It is a harmless beast.
You are weary; you shall eat
Drink, bathe perhaps. Would you like that?
EDWARD:
Aye.
MORTIMER:
You shall find yourself a friend.
Edward looks at him.
You shall be taken to England’s Parliament.
There before the Peers you’ll testify
You have resigned.
EDWARD:
Draw nearer, Mortimer.
We give you leave to sit. But for our
Broken health be brief
In your petition.
MORTIMER to himself:
He is hard. Antaeus-like
He draws strength from Westminster’s soil.
Aloud:
Brevity’s the salt in watery soup. I
Have come for your reply if you’ll
Resign in favour of your son Edward.
EDWARD:
Thirteen years away from Westminster
After long campaigns, the thorny exercise
Of command, the flesh’s needs have led me to
A commonplace concern with the welfare and
Decline of this my body.
MORTIMER:
I understand you.
Nightly wanderings, human disenchantment
Give pause for thought. And do you
After all this weariness of which you speak
And which you’ve borne so patiently, with such
Broken health, still intend now
To continue office?
EDWARD:
That is not in our plan.
MORTIMER:
Will you consent?
EDWARD:
That is not in our plan. The substance
Of these last days starts to clear. Edward, whose
Fall approaches, inexorable yet
Not fearful, knows himself. Not wishing much
To die he savours the usefulness of
Withering destruction. Edward, who no more
Poor Edward is, thinks death but little price
For such pleasure in his murderer. So then
When it is time, Mortimer, come yourself.
MORTIMER:
I see you grossly wrapped up in yourself
Whiles I, no longer sullied by a taste
For power, bear on my shoulders
This island that one workday word
Upon your lips can save from civil war.
Blunt perhaps in feelings, yet knowing much
No doubt not kingly, yet just perhaps
Not even that if you will, but yet
The rough stammering mouth of poor England
I ask you and I pray you:
Resign.
EDWARD:
Approach us not with such a mean request!
And yet at this hour when my body
Purifies I yearn to feel
Your hands about my throat.
MORTIMER:
You fight well. As one well versed in rhetoric
Whom men call the Eel, and valuing
Your taste, none the less I ask you
In this sober matter, at this night hour
For a brief answer.
Edward is silent.
Do not stop your ears! Lest the weight
Of human tongues, a moment’s whim
And at the last misunderstanding, plunge
England in the ocean, speak now!
Edward is silent.
Will you resign before the Commons at noon
Today?
Edward is silent.
MORTIMER:
Will you not resign? You
Refuse?
EDWARD:
Though Edward must in swiftest time
Bring to a close more tangled matters
Than you, O busy Mortimer, can know
Yet while he’s in this world he takes good care
For all that
Not to meddle arrogantly
In your affairs that from a growing
Distance seem to him most
Murky.
Therefore your question has no yea or nay.
Stitched up, his lips will nothing say.
Westminster
MORTIMER alone:
So long as he draws breath it can come to light.
Since not rough winds could snatch his foolish
Mantle from him, nor the warm sun draw it
Off, let it go rot
With him.
A scrap of paper cunningly prepared
Odourless, proving nothing, shall this
Chance resolve.
Since he gives my question neither yea or nay
I shall give an answer in like kind.
‘Eduardum occidere nolite timere bonum est.’
I leave out the comma. Then can it read:
‘Kill not the king, ’tis good to fear the worst’
Or depending on their state of innocence
Or whether they have dined or fasted:
‘Fear not to kill the king, ’tis good he die.’
Unpointed as it is thus shall it go.
Now is England
Under us, above us God, who’s very old.
My sole witness I take before the Peers.
Lightborn, come in.
Enter Lightborn.
If, when morning greys, the prisoner’s
Learned nothing, he’s not for saving.
Sewer in the Tower.
The two Gurneys.
ELDER GURNEY:
He speaks incessantly, tonight.
YOUNGER GURNEY:
It is
A wonder this king will not yield.
Worn out purposely, for when he would sleep
Our drum rolls, he stands
In a vault knee-deep in
Sewage, in which all the channels
Of the Tower run, yet he says not yea.
ELDER GURNEY:
That is most strange, brother. Just now I
Opened up the hatch to throw
Him meat and I was almost stifled
With the stench.
YOUNGER GURNEY:
He has a body more able to endure than we.
He sings. When you raise th
e hatch you hear
Him sing.
ELDER GURNEY:
I think he makes psalms
Against Spring’s coming. Open up, we’ll
Ask him again.
ELDER GURNEY:
Wilt thou say yes, Ned?
YOUNGER GURNEY:
No answer.
Lightborn has entered.
ELDER GURNEY:
Still he will not yield.
Lightborn gives a letter.
YOUNGER GURNEY:
What’s this? I do not understand.
‘Kill not the king, ’tis good to fear the worst.’
ELDER GURNEY:
‘Fear not to kill the king’ is there.
YOUNGER GURNEY:
Give the token.
Lightborn gives it.
ELDER GURNEY:
There is the key and there the vault.
Carry out the order. Need you anything besides?
LIGHTBORN:
A table and a feather bed.
YOUNGER GURNEY:
Here is a light for the cage.
Exeunt the two Gurneys.
Lightborn opens the door.
EDWARD:
This hole in which they hold me is the sink-hole
And upon me here, these seven hours, falls
London’s filth. Yet its sewage hardens
My limbs. Now they are like cedar
Wood. The stench of rubbish makes my
Stature boundless. Great rolls on the drums
Keep him awake, though weak, so his death
Find him not in a swoon but rather
Waking.
Who’s there? What light is that? Wherefore com’st thou?
LIGHTBORN:
To comfort you.
EDWARD:
Thou would’st me kill.
LIGHTBORN:
What means your Highness to mistrust me thus?
Come out, brother.
EDWARD:
Thy look can harbour naught but death.
LIGHTBORN:
I am not without sin, yet not without
Heart. Come and lie down.
EDWARD:
Howell had pity, Berkeley was poorer
Yet he stained not his hand. The elder
Gurney’s heart’s a block
From Caucasus. The younger’s harder. And
Mortimer, from whom thou comest, ice.
LIGHTBORN:
You are haggard, sire. Lie you
Upon this bed and rest awhile.
EDWARD:
Good was rain; hunger satisfied. But
The best was darkness. All
Were wavering, many hanging back but
The best were those betrayed me. Therefore
Whoever’s dark let him dark remain, who’s
Unclean, remain unclean. Praise
Want, praise cruelty, praise
The darkness.
LIGHTBORN:
Sleep, sire.
EDWARD:
Something buzzes in my ear and tells me
If I sleep now I never wake.
‘Tis waiting makes me tremble thus.
Yet I cannot ope my eyes, they stick.
Therefore tell me wherefore thou art come.
LIGHTBORN:
For this.
Smothers him.
Westminster
MORTIMER alone:
Rise up eleventh of February
The others are shrubs beside me
They tremble at my name and dare not
Impeach me for his death.
Let come who will.
Enter the Queen.
ANNE:
Ah, Mortimer, my son hath news
His father’s dead and now, new-hailed
As king, comes hither in the knowledge
We have murdered him.
MORTIMER:
What matter that he know since he’s
A child so weak a drop of rain would
Kill him?
ANNE:
In to the Council Chamber he is gone
To crave the aid and succour of the peers, who
Like the people, wait since morning for this
Edward whom you promised. He tears
His hair and wrings his hands and vows
To be revenged upon us both.
MORTIMER:
Seem
I like one soon to be under earth?
Enter Young Edward, Lord Abbot, Rice ap Howell, peers.
YOUNG EDWARD:
Murderers!
MORTIMER:
What sayest thou, boy?
YOUNG EDWARD:
Think not that I’m frighted with thy words.
ANNE:
Edward!
YOUNG EDWARD:
Stand off, mother! Had you loved him
As I did you’d not endure his death.
ABBOT:
Why speak you not, my lord, unto the king?
RICE AP HOWELL:
At this hour should Edward speak
Unto the Parliament.
A LORD:
At this hour
Is Edward’s mouth dumb.
MORTIMER:
Who is the man who will
Impeach me for this death?
YOUNG EDWARD:
I am he.
MORTIMER:
Your witness?
YOUNG EDWARD:
My father’s voice in me.
MORTIMER:
Have you no other witness, my lord?
YOUNG EDWARD:
Those not here are my witnesses.
ABBOT:
The Earl of Kent.
RICE AP HOWELL:
Berkeley.
A LORD:
The brothers Gurney.
ABBOT:
A man, Lightborn by name, seen
In the Tower.
ANNE:
No more!
ABBOT:
Who had a paper with him
In your writing.
The peers examine the paper.
RICE AP HOWELL:
Equivocal truly. The comma lacks.
ABBOT:
Purposely.
May be. Yet it stands not therein
That someone kill the king.
YOUNG EDWARD:
Ah Mortimer, thou knowest it was done
And so shall it be done to thee. Thou diest!
A witness to this world that thy
All too subtle wiles, by which
A kingly body in a grave now lies, too subtle were
For God.
MORTIMER:
If I see right you charge me with the murder
Of Edward the Second. Sometimes
The truth untruthful seems nor can we ever
Know which side the buffalo of state
Will roll. Good and moral
The side it rolls not on.
The buffalo has rolled and fallen on me.
Had I proof, how would proof serve me?
The man the state has called a murderer
Does well to play the murderer
Were his hand as white as Scotland’s snow.
Therefore I am silent.
ABBOT:
Heed not the windings of the Eel.
MORTIMER:
Take away my seal! Squadron on squadron
France spits towards the isle. In Normandy
The armies rot. Banish me
To Normandy as your Governor
Or as a captain. As a recruiting officer
What you will, with naked arm to whip
The army for you ’gainst the foe. Send me as a
Soldier to be whipped on.
Yet do not thus
‘Twixt meat and napkin, take my life
Because a young whelp yaps
For blood to see his father dead.
Ask yourself if now’s the time
To clear the case of Edward’s death,
Or whether this whole isl
and, purged of one
Murder, should swim in blood.
You need me.
Your silence is heard as far as Ireland.
Have you a new tongue in your head
Since yesterday? If your hands are still
Unsullied, why, they are not sullied yet.
To be dispatched thus coldly smacks of morality.
ANNE:
For my sake, sweet son, pity Mortimer!
Young Edward is silent.
Be silent then, I never taught you speech.
MORTIMER:
Madam, stand off! I will rather die
Than sue for life unto a paltry boy.
YOUNG EDWARD:
Hang him!
MORTIMER:
See, boy, the strumpet fortune turns
A wheel. It bears thee upwards.
Upwards and upwards. Thou holdest fast. Upwards.
There comes a point, the highest. From whence thou see’st
It is no ladder, but now bears thee downwards
For it’s round indeed. Who’s seen that, boy
Does he fall or let himself go? The question
Is amusing. Savour it!
YOUNG EDWARD:
Take him away!
Mortimer is led out.
ANNE:
Bring not the blood of Roger Mortimer on you!
YOUNG EDWARD:
These words argue, mother, thou, perchance
Hast brought my father’s blood on thee.
For thou, tied fast to Mortimer, I fear
Art suspect of his death and
We send you to the Tower for trial.
ANNE:
Not from thy mother’s milk suckest thou
Such caustic wit, Edward the Third.
Dragged here and there, more than others
And not from love of change, I’ve ever seen
Evil nurturing its man and paying
Every triumph over conscience with success.
Now evil itself betrays me.
You say in these last hours died a man
Whose face yours dimly calls to mind
Who did me many wrongs, whom I forget
(Out of pity, you might say)
Even his face and voice I blotted out.
So much the better for him.
Now his son sends me to the Tower.
That is as good a place as anywhere.
You who have the excuse, that you
A child, have seen about you such hard
Lifeless things, what know you of the world
Where nothing’s so inhuman as
Judgement and cold righteousness?
Exit Anne.
YOUNG EDWARD:
It yet remains for us to lay his body
Worthily to rest.
ABBOT:
And so it is of those who saw his crowning
In Westminster Abbey, not one shall see
His exequies. Of Edward the Second who
Not knowing, as it seems, which among his enemies
Remembered him, knowing not what
Breed lived in light above his head, knowing
Not the colour of the leaves, the season
Nor the pattern of the stars, oblivious
Of himself, in misery