Christmas Eve 2019
There are some people who love Christmas and others who loathe it. Certain permanently disgusted characters, one of whom happens to reside in Gotham City, are of the "Bah, Humbug!" school. Jason Blood often grumbles that Etrigan is more likely to wish you a Merry Christmas than Batman is! I do like our chiropteran friend, but honestly…!
Anyway, the Chief Grouch is in Gotham and not the Tower of London this Christmas Night. The rest of the Paranormal Investigations Bureau and their spouses are here. With Velma and Jupiter coming complete with the rest of Mystery Inc and the Three Investigators respectively, this is quite the party. Luna has brought not only Rolf and the twins, but also her father and the Potters, Longbottoms and Weasleys. Since the Doctor is visiting Kate Stewart at UNIT Headquarters and Zelena and Robyn Mills are spending Christmas with Louise, Harriet and me, this should be a Christmas Night to remember.
"How is Gryffindor doing in the House Cup?" Anne Boleyn asked. It may be five centuries since she finished Hogwarts (Gryffindor 1512-1519), but she is still a Lioness at heart.
"Second to Slytherin," Rose replied, "with Hufflepuff only slightly behind in third. Given that less than forty points separate Slytherin and fourth-placed Ravenclaw, this could be the closest contest in years.
"We are ahead in the Quidditch Cup though, with yours truly leading our exciting trio of Chasers."
"That's great! I was a Chaser too during my halcyon time at Hogwarts."
I had been back at the Tower since. On Bonfire Night, I got to hear the screams of Guy Fawkes from his torture on the rack after the Gunpowder Plot had failed. If I was racked as badly as he was said to have been, you would still hear my screams 414 years later too!
On Remembrance Sunday, Anne introduced me to the ghost of Carl Hans Lody, a German spy who on 6 November 1914 obtained the dubious distinction of becoming the first person executed in the Tower of London or on Tower Hill since 1747. No victim of axe or sword, he was dispatched by firing squad on the rifle range between the Martin and Constable Towers. Another ten spies from the First World War and one more from the Second became the last names in that dread roll call of those who were put to death in this doleful place. A brave patriot for his country, Carl is hugely popular with his fellow ghosts here. He is here tonight by the way to join the spectral wassailers in making merry. Catholic and Protestant alike shall unite in joyful songs sacred and secular.
We are walking into the Chapel of Saint Peter Ad Vincula (Saint Peter in Chains, which is a reference to Chapter 12 of the Acts of the Apostles, for those of you slept through whatever Religious Instruction is called these days), the larger of the two Chapels Royal in the Tower. Despite the name, the building is a full-scale church, sited within the Inner Ward. Strictly speaking, the Chapel Royal is not a building, but a part of the Royal Household, with priests and choristers, both men and boys. A few past and present royal palaces have Chapels Royal to host the Chapel Royal, although it has been many a decade since a monarch has lived or worshipped in the Tower of London. A church has stood on the site since before the original White Tower was built by William the Conqueror, with the original Anglo-Saxon church incorporated into the new Norman Castle complex. This was replaced by a new church on the same site in Edward I's time and, after that was badly damaged by fire in 1512, Henry VIII had the current building erected a few years later. It gave him the perfect place to bury the bodies, literally!
One of the saddest spots in the Tower is the Victorian pavement on which the communion table rests. The floor in the area was in a deplorable condition at the time and was replaced. During the dig, they found the remains of some Tower Dignitaries and some of those who had been beheaded by axe or sword for crimes real or imagined. Anne Boleyn's remains were amongst those unearthed and then reinterred under marble slabs with their titles and coats of arms emblazoned upon them. The Duke of Monmouth and the Countess of Salisbury were also amongst them, the Duke under the table itself.
"This place must bring up some bad memories," Louise says to Anne sympathetically. "You are buried here…"
"I was thrown into an empty arrow chest and buried unmarked in the floor!" Anne sniffed. "They even tucked my head underneath my…" She paused, before adding "No wonder I hate that bloody song!
"At least those good Victorians gave me a decent burial. That only took about 340 years!" There were a few hearty cries of "Hear, hear!" at this point. Look, nobody deserved that fate, particularly those like Anne who were innocent victims. Those Victorians gave them honourable and devout burials. I know that Anne, the Dukes of Somerset, Northumberland and Monmouth, the Countess of Salisbury and Lady Rochford are forever grateful for the belated courtesy, as are Viscount Rochford, Katherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey and others whose bodies were either not identified or had been buried where the floor did not need replacing, but were still given proper memorial stones.
"That odious oik Henry VIII was the living definition of the term ozard!" I snapped, angry at that last cruelty inflicted on his unfortunate second spouse. "If anyone was the exact opposite of wizard as in very good, it was that awful…
"Fossilised Fishhooks! I'm sorry, Zelena. I forgot that you used to live there. You are wizard in both senses as far as I am concerned! I meant no offence."
"None was taken, Rex!" Zelena laughed. "I don't like that film either. Bloody hell! That caricature of a witch was not remotely like me. I am not soluble in water! Did they mistake me for a pill?!
"You are one of my dearest friends, Rex, weird phrases and all!" She pulled Louise and I into a tight embrace. "My pretties!" Zelena and I became firm friends immediately when I was part of the Great Wizard Exile (did that really start two years ago this very night?) and billeted with her in Storybrooke. As with Luna, Jean, Linda, George and Penny, I think of her as an honorary sister.
"Auntie Anne," Harriet said, holding Robyn, "whilst Mommy, Daddy and Auntie Zelena are enjoying their little cuddle, could you tell me why you asked us to come here? It obviously makes you sad…"
"I love Christmas, Harriet, and I love this chapel, which is one of my regular haunts. There is to be a service of Carols around the Crib shortly and Christmas Eve Midnight Mass starts at half-past-eleven. We like to attend, Protestant and Catholic alike. Our two saints, John Fisher and Thomas Moore, long since Passed on to Glory, but William Laud still has a presence here and should be with us tonight."
"Who was William Laud?" Lorcan asked, like Anne, correctly pronouncing the surname as "Lord". The word is an old synonym for praise, which was highly appropriate.
"That would be me," said a short ghost. He was elderly, clad in Episcopal vestments and with a long white moustache and a neatly trimmed short beard on his chin. "In life, I was Charles I's Archbishop of Canterbury, until I was convicted by a bill of attainder of treason and beheaded on Tower Hill on 10 January 1645. The king pardoned me, but that was during the Civil War and Parliament ignored him. I was 71 and not long for this world in any event."
"A bill of attainder?!" Jean asked. "What the heck is that?!"
"That was a legal fiction," Jon Warrender explained, polishing his spectacles before making another vain attempt to tidy his fair hair, "in which a man or woman could be found guilty of treason or felony by an Act of Parliament being passed, rather than by Trial by Jury. They were abolished in 1870, but none had been enacted since 1820. Basically, a bill stated that a person or group was found guilty of a serious crime and that they therefore were deprived of all rights, including that to a fair trial.
"In short, they were a barbaric practice that have rightfully gone the way of the dodo." Hear, Hear, Jon! Those of us in the No-Longer Young Adventurer community tend to be strong believers in Fair Play! We are Loyal and Just. Look, why should we bother looking for clues to prove that a person was a jewel thief, only for the Houses of Parliament (or equivalent body elsewhere) to decide purely on a whim that they were guilty all the time anyway?! It is just not cricket (or similar sport elsewhere)!
"Jinkies!" Velma exclaimed. "That sounds awful! The poor man!"
"That was an abomination against due process, that is rightfully prohibited in the Constitution of the United States of America. That said, some legislation of our own did take time to be stricken down by the Supreme Court because of it." Jupiter may be verbose, but George is very lucky to have landed her man. Velma really makes Jigger happy too. No wonder Jon and Penny, a couple since their late teens, were driven to distraction by the three of us blind idiots completely clueless to the True Loves across the Pond! Well, it all turned out alright in the end.
"Many thanks," Archbishop Laud said softly, "but I am at peace now. The High Church party of the Church of England celebrate the anniversary of my martyrdom to this day. Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads aren't commemorated in that way.
"They accused me of spreading Roman Catholicism. I was more of an Arminian than a Calvinist in my theology and preferred rituals and ecclesiastical hierarchy to Puritan simplicity, but I was no Catholic!"
"My old friend could be rude and tactless," came a new voice, "but he was a good and holy man." We were joined by the ghost of a tall man with a stooped neck and a bent brow. He also had a moustache and beard but was clearly some twenty years the Archbishop's junior at his time of death.
"Meet Thomas, Earl of Strafford, everyone," Anne announced. "He was also Attainted by Parliament in Charles I's time, after they couldn't convict him via a trial."
"That was in 1641," Jon said, "the year before the Civil War began in England. Lord Strafford had been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1632. There, he proved a hard but fair administrator and judge.
"In 1639, King Charles recalled Lord Strafford to London. The staunchly Presbyterian Scottish Kirk had not taken kindly to the King and Archbishop Laud trying to impose the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer upon them. Many Scots signed the National Covenant, originally in the kirkyard of Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, pledging resistance. After the King had failed to put down the protestors in the so-called First Bishops War, the Earl was tasked with raising an English and Irish army to quell the protest. When the King recalled Parliament to raise funds, however, they arrested Lord Strafford and attempted to try him for treason for raising said army. After he was acquitted, on the reasonable defence that it could hardly be treason against the King to do what the King had requested in the first place, he was Attainted and executed anyway."
"Only after the King had dithered over signing the death warrant," Archbishop Laud noted, "since he had promised to pardon Thomas. Unfortunately, he felt that he would get his funding if he didn't. Little good it his breach of promise did him! As I commented at the time, he was 'a mild and gracious prince, that knows not how to be, or be made, great.'"
"I merely alluded to Psalm 146 verse 3," Lord Strafford agreed. "'Put not your trust in princes, for in them there is no salvation.' King Charles was a good and proud man, but tended to be indecisive and arrogant, which is never a good combination."
"It ended up costing him both his crown and his head!" the Archbishop agreed. "He and I were both too proud to compromise with the Scots and the English Puritans and other Parliamentarians. In fact, if we had been less haughty, then we may have avoided our troubles in the first place. It mattered not a whit what he thought of the Divine Right of Kings once the Commons had decided that they had had enough of him."
"Well, it is Christmas," Anne pointed out, "so let us talk not of Death, but of Life."
We all readily agreed. After all, the service was about to begin!
There is always something magical about a boy soprano singing the first verse of Once in Royal David's City to open a carol concert. It may require the verse being sung at the tempo of a tortoise doing a funeral march, but the ethereal beauty is beyond compare. Then the choir sings the next couple of verses, before the congregation join in with the last three.
The ghosts join in heartily with the congregational singing of songs ancient to us, but often from after their lifetimes. Again, Protestant and Catholic all unite with those who ordered their executions to praise the Lord at the tops of their voices.
Once the last chorus of Hark the Herald Angels Sing resounded in the Church of Saint Peter Ad Vincula and the final Blessing and Dismissal was spoken, we all decamped to Tower Green. Once again, we met around a blazing bonfire. Mark Smeaton strummed his spectral lute and the merrymaking began.
"My daughter would have got a shock if you turned up in that face, Doctor," Anne Boleyn noted. "Do you ever regret…?"
"Elizabeth was a great woman, and I am sure that we would have been happy together, but I live for millennia and she died at 69. That was a good age back then, of course. Eventually, I would have seen her grow old and perish whatever had happened.
"If you had your time again, would you still have married Henry VIII? Was being the mother of Good Queen Bess worth being beheaded before her third birthday?"
Anne thought for a moment. "The fool never knew that I really was a witch, for all his talk of my having bewitched him into marriage. If only my wand hadn't been in safe storage when I was arrested, then I could have faked my, George and Jane's deaths and we could have fled abroad. No good crying over spilt potions, I suppose."
"You still have a portrait at Hogwarts," James told her. "Sir Nicholas tells us that you were the perfect Gryffindor. Hot-headed, impulsive and yet undaunted by anything."
"Thank you. Now for a joyous carole…" A carole, by the way, is a French dance, often associated with Christmas merrymaking. It only became associated with songs and later hymns by association later.
"Happy Christmas!" I said to the ghosts as we left the Tower after the Midnight Communion Service had ended.
"Happy Christmas, everyone!" replied Anne Boleyn. "See you all soon, I hope. God rest ye merry, all of you."
"And you. Maybe one of these days you could follow us through the portal and spend Christmas with us?"
"I'm sure that Ned Seymour and the Lady Jane could look after the Tower's ghosts for a week or two. Maybe next year? Sir Walter always tells me how glorious the Americas are."
"You must come to Storybrooke," Zelena told her. "We have all the technologies of the New World and all the courtesies of the Old.
"As a sassy former queen, you should be perfectly at home.
"It is some hours behind us in the States, Rex. I should have plenty of time to Skype Regina and family a Merry Christmas."
"That's true. Come on, everyone. There is mulled wine and mince pies at the Dana House, one step through a portal away."
"Goodbye, Auntie Anne!" Harriet called. "Happy Christmas!"
"And to you, my dear! Rex, Louise, kiss your daughter from me please. Luna, Rolf, do the same with your sons."