All the week, Betty went to a High School, but Saturday was a whole holiday, and greatly to her satisfaction, it was arranged that she should spend her Saturdays with Godmother.
It was just a week since she had visited the London of Roman times, but not till the following Saturday, when she actually saw her Godmother, did the memory of “the magic part” come back to her.
“It’s so exciting to remember the secret directly I see you!” she exclaimed. “How far back are we going to-day? Oh, do let us begin at once, without wasting a single instant.”
Godmother laughed. “We won’t waste a single instant certainly. But you’re not going back into the Past till this afternoon. I’ve ordered the car, and we shall drive again into the City.”
By “the City” Betty knew she meant all the business part of London, to which thousands of people went every day to work in offices or warehouses.
“Why is only this crowded part of London called the City?” she asked presently when they were driving through bustling streets near St. Paul’s. “I should have thought the whole of London was a city?”
“So it is,” returned Godmother. “But as it all gradually spread, east and west, north and south, from London Bridge, it has become usual to speak of this busiest and earliest part of it as the City, and of all the rest by different names, such as the West End, North London, South London, and so forth. It’s such a huge place, you see, that such divisions as these are necessary.”
“Now we’re coming to London Bridge. I’m glad we’re going over it again,” Betty said presently, as they passed the Monument from which the previous week she had looked far and wide.
“We will drive very slowly, and I want you to notice several buildings that can be seen from the bridge.”
“There’s the Tower!” said Betty, looking to the left, where the solid square of the main building, with a tower at each corner, was visible. “And there’s St. Paul’s,” she added, turning to the right, and gazing at its dome and cross.
“Look at all these wharves and warehouses lining each bank of the river, with the great cranes hanging from them,” advised Godmother. “I want you to remember this scene. Try to get a clear picture of it in your mind.”
Betty looked with interest at the crowded shipping below the bridge, and at the bales of goods, some being lowered into boats, others hoisted up into the warehouses. She saw how, left and right, the river was spanned by bridges, and how, as far as she could see, warehouses and quays stretched in a continuous line, while smoke from thousands of factory chimneys rose into the air.
“Now we are on the south side of the river,” said Godmother, when the end of the bridge was reached. “All this district is called Southwark, and beyond it there are miles of dingy streets and houses, making up the parts of London called Bermondsey and Newington and Camberwell, and so forth. But it’s houses, houses, and most of them ugly houses, all the way. That black, dingy bridge overhead, spanning the road, belongs to London Bridge railway station.”
“But here’s one beautiful place at least!” Betty remarked, pointing to the right, where a fine church was hemmed in between walls of hideous sheds and other buildings belonging to the railway. A narrow churchyard, with a flagged path across it, separated the church from these ugly dirty surroundings, and a few trees just breaking into leaf showed brilliantly green against its ancient walls.
“Yes, I particularly want you to notice that church. It’s called St. Saviour’s, Southwark. Look at it well, and don’t forget its name. We’ll go back now to the north end of the bridge, and drive a little way along that street which runs beside the river towards the Tower.”
“Thames Street,” murmured Betty, reading its name on the wall as they turned into it.
So crowded was this particular street, so full of heavy lorries and wagons outside its warehouses, that they were soon obliged to leave it, and drive into Cheapside, quite close, but farther back from the river. Through St. Paul’s Churchyard, down Ludgate Hill into Fleet Street they drove, and straight on down the Strand.
“There’s the Savoy Hotel, and the Savoy Theatre next to it, where I saw ‘Alice in Wonderland’ once,” observed Betty, as they passed these buildings.
“Remember that also,” said Godmother, “and try to get some of the names of the streets into your head. These streets, I mean, that lead out of the Strand. All of them, you see, go down to the river.”
Betty had already noticed some of them, as the car passed, and had murmured their names. They were soon in Whitehall now, with the well-known Abbey in sight, and therefore near home.
“Westminster Hall,” said Godmother, when they passed the Houses of Parliament. She pointed to its long sloping roof, and added, “That’s one of the buildings you must remember.”
Every time Godmother drew her special attention to something, Betty gave a little smile of excitement, for she knew she would see that particular place or building again—by magic. And the magic made all the difference.
_______________________________________
It was two or three hours later before she followed Godmother into the white-panelled room.
“Oh, I do hope it will be nice this time!” she exclaimed, full of excited anticipation.
Godmother laughed as she went to the cabinet.
“Last Saturday the talisman was a Roman ring. What is it going to be now?” Betty asked, as her godmother selected two objects from the cabinet. One she saw was an old book, the other, when she held it in her hand, she found to be a beautifully engraved gold chain.
“This book,” said Godmother, “was written by a poet—Geoffrey Chaucer by name—who lived more than five hundred years ago. You will discover to whom the chain once belonged, later on. Now, shut your eyes, hold the chain in both hands, and say, after me, these words written by old Chaucer, five hundred years ago.”
Betty obeyed, and repeated slowly after Godmother:
“ ... When that the month of May
Is comen, and that I hear the foules sing,
And that the floures ginnen for to spring,
Farewell my booke and my devotion....”
“Open your eyes,” said Godmother, after a silence. “We have gone back to the year 1388. Richard the Second is king. This is London Bridge, and it is May Day.”
Betty’s eyes, now wide open, wandered right and left. The London she looked upon, was completely changed from the scene she had beheld on her last magic visit. Gone were the Roman villas, gone the fortress, gone the Roman Hall of Justice. But the wall that had then encircled the city—or one very like it—was still there, for from where she stood, she could see parts of it, with its massive gates at intervals opening into the green country beyond. The bridge on which she stood, was now built of stone, firm and strong. At either end, stood fortified towers, with gates, and in the middle of the bridge, was a beautiful little Chapel. Leaning over the parapet, Betty saw that the chapel was in two parts, one built above the other, and from the lower one, steps descended into the water.
“We’ll look at the people as they pass, before I tell you how all this change has come about,” Godmother said. And indeed the people were interesting and picturesque enough to occupy all Betty’s attention.
“How gay they are! What beautiful coloured clothes they wear!” she cried. “Oh, Godmother, do look at this young man coming. Isn’t he splendid?”
She pointed to a boy of eighteen or nineteen who came swinging along the bridge, dressed in a short tunic edged with fur, and embroidered all over with flowers. The tunic had long wide hanging sleeves tapering to a point which almost reached the young gallant’s knee. He wore long green silk stockings, boots ending in a peak, and his crimped fair hair fell on either side of his face down to his shoulders.
“What a lot of monks there are!” she exclaimed, when the beautiful youth had gone by. Some of these were in rough grey habits with a knotted rope round their waists; others wore white robes under a black cloak, and there were many of them going to and fro upon the bridge.
“The grey ones are the Franciscans, or Grey Friars, and those with the black cloak are the Dominicans, or Black Friars,” Godmother told her.... “Here is an old countrywoman coming in from the southern gate with her butter and eggs! Doesn’t she look comfortable?”
She was a stout old lady, with folds of white linen round her neck drawn up on either side of her face under a flat broad-brimmed hat. Her woollen skirt was very short, showing scarlet stockings and buckled shoes, and she carried an enormous basket on one arm.
“That white linen arrangement round her face is called a wimple,” said Godmother. “Nuns, if you remember, still wear the same sort of thing.”
“She isn’t a bit like a nun though,” laughed Betty, watching the fat old woman as she waddled past her.
The next moment her attention was attracted by a group of children who came running along the bridge shouting and singing. They all had flowers in their hands, and some of the little ones wore wreaths of bluebells or primroses.
“Oh! don’t they look pretty!” exclaimed Betty in delight. “And they must have picked the flowers in the fields and woods just outside that gate at the end of the bridge,” she added.
“You remember what is at the end of the bridge as we saw it this morning? A railway station, and a railway arch over an ugly street, with miles and miles of streets beyond. The Church of St. Saviour’s, was the only beautiful thing visible—a change indeed,” said Godmother.
Betty watched the children and looked at their clothes with the greatest interest. The little girls wore frocks looped up on one side over a girdle, some of the boys had long stockings and short tunics and wore tiny capes of linen, with a hood buttoned under the chin.
The whole merry party presently ran into one of the recesses of the bridge where there was plenty of room, and began to play a singing game, dancing as they sang.
Though some of the words sounded strange in Betty’s ears, she understood most of them, and the verses of the song, if they were put into the English to which we are now accustomed, would run something after this fashion:
“London Bridge is broken down,
Dance over, my Lady Lee;
London Bridge is broken down
With a gay ladee.
How shall we build it up again?
Dance over, my Lady Lee;
How shall we build it up again?
With a gay ladee.
Build it up with stone so strong,
Dance over, my Lady Lee,
Then ’twill last for ages long
With a gay ladee.”
“That song is old even now—in this year 1388,” said Godmother. “The great-grandmothers of these children may have sung it. It probably celebrated the time when the last of the timber bridges was broken down in a storm, and this stone one, upon which we are standing, was built in its place about the time when Richard the First was reigning.”
“And we are in the reign of Richard the Second now, nearly two hundred years later,” Betty replied.
“The children are right when they say London Bridge will last for ages long,” Godmother remarked. “It lasted more than six hundred years—almost to our own time. My Grandfather, for instance, Betty, was born the year this Bridge upon which we are standing, was pulled down, and the one you saw this morning, built.”
But Betty’s eyes were still fixed on the children who at intervals in their game ran to offer their bunches of flowers to the passers-by, shouting “May Day! May Day!”
Presently one little girl with a pretty voice, began to sing (in words which were nearly, though not altogether, like the English of our own day) a little song which, written down, was this:
“Summer is icumen in;
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springeth the wude nu—
Sing cuccu!”
It was easy to put this into modern English, and Betty knew what it meant:
“Summer is a-coming in;
Loud sings cuckoo!
Groweth seed, and bloweth mead,
And springeth the wood new.
Sing cuckoo!”
“That’s the first verse of a song that is more than a hundred years old even in this year 1388 to which we’ve gone back,” said Godmother. “Yet you can understand it pretty well, can’t you? It shows how near to the language we speak to-day, the speech of the fourteenth century is growing.”
“Yes. And isn’t it lovely for those children to hear the cuckoo and pick flowers just on the other side of London Bridge? Oh, I wish the country came right up to the City now—like this,” sighed Betty, nodding towards the fields and woods that made a green belt close behind the wall.
“Godmother!” she exclaimed suddenly, pointing to a sort of castle near the river bank. “There’s something I know! Why, surely it’s the Tower of London? Only there’s not so much of it as there is now,” she added.
“Yes, it’s the Tower right enough—three hundred years old already in 1388, and eight hundred years old in our own time. But now, my dear, before you get too distracted by all you’re seeing and hearing, I’m going to take you in here to talk history for a few minutes.”
Betty followed her into the porch of the chapel on the Bridge, where they sat down on a bench out of sight of all the gay life outside.
“We left London,” Godmother began, “empty and deserted, with a group of our Saxon ancestors whom we may call English people, standing uncertainly outside the walls built round the city by the departed Romans. What happened next?”
“Those English people settled in London, and in time made it alive and busy again.”
Godmother nodded. “And what became of the British who used to live here?”
“They were driven West, into Wales, and are the Welsh people now.”
“Yes. And then?”
Betty reflected. “Oh! Why, the Danes came, didn’t they? Yes. The English king, Alfred the Great, fought against them. And then afterwards the Normans came and conquered England. And they spoke French!... I don’t see why you call those Saxon people who stood outside London, our ancestors, Godmother? Because we must be all mixed up with the Danes and the Normans—especially with the Normans, who were quite different, and had a different language. So I don’t understand how those first English could be our ancestors exactly?”
“I’ll tell you how. When you say the Normans spoke a different language, you’re right. But in saying they were ‘quite different,’ you’re wrong. What does the word Norman mean? Merely a Northman. They came from the same northern countries as the English, and were originally of the same race. The reason they spoke French, was, that for two or three hundred years before they came to England they had been living in the north of France. But when they conquered this island and settled down here, what happened? Did the English people learn to speak the language of their conquerors? Far from it. The conquerors learnt to speak the tongue of the men they conquered, ‘mixed up,’ as you say, with some of their own French. Three hundred years after William the First landed, the people—conquerors and conquered alike—have become one people, speaking one language, the English language. Altered, of course, from the kind of language spoken by those wild-looking men blowing their horns outside London walls. If you had heard them talking, you wouldn’t have understood a word (even though it was the foundation of the English we talk to-day). But now, in this year 1388, three hundred years after the Norman Conquest, you can understand most of it, can’t you? Out of the mixture of the Norman’s French and the English people’s early English, has come the language we now speak. Well, now that the history lesson is over, let us see all we can of the London the poet Chaucer knew in the reign of Richard the Second. We may even meet Chaucer himself—if we’re lucky!” she added.
“I want to see the Tower,” said Betty. “Dad took me there once. But it looked different, from the Tower we can see from this bridge.”
“That’s because parts have been added to it since the reign of Richard the Second. But you saw the keep, or White Tower, as it is called, when you went with your father the other day. That keep, or central tower, has been standing ever since William the Conqueror built it. Look at the moat full of water round the castle. That was made when Richard the First was king.”
“There’s no water there now,” Betty said. “When Dad and I went over the Tower the other day, soldiers were drilling in the moat! Oh, Godmother,” she went on after a moment, “isn’t it strange and—uncanny to think that none of the people on this bridge, know all the things that are going to happen in that Tower?”
“The things we know because we live in a later time, you mean? Yes. Can you think of some of them?”
“The poor little princes are soon going to be murdered there, for one thing,” began Betty eagerly. “And Sir Thomas More, a good deal later on, will be beheaded. And——” she hesitated.
“Ah, yes, in the years to come many, many poor prisoners will go under the Traitor’s Gate there, never to return,” said Godmother. “But we won’t think of them now. Let us look at this beautiful little chapel beside us on the bridge. It’s dedicated to the latest on the list of saints. Can you guess who that is?”
Betty looked puzzled.
“St. Thomas à Becket. You remember all about him, and how he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral?”
“Yes! and there used to be pilgrimages to his tomb,” put in Betty.
“Later on we may see some of the pilgrims starting on their journey,” Godmother told her. “Now let us take a boat and go westward up the river.”
“That will lead to Westminster, won’t it? Oh, Godmother, do let us see how Westminster has got on!” exclaimed Betty suddenly, remembering the low swampy island of Roman times.
“That’s just what we’re going to do. We’ll take a boat from the steps down there that lead from the lower chapel of St. Thomas to the water. We shall be in time, if we make haste, to join that party of monks who have been to say their prayers in the chapel, and are just going away by boat.”
Betty hurried after her from the upper to the lower chapel, and she and Godmother stepped into the boat with three or four of the Black Friars as they were called—a merry party, and, as Betty thought, not at all monk-like, in their conversation. Though she could not understand all they said, because many of the words were pronounced in a way strange to her, she gathered enough to know that they were talking about a pilgrimage to Canterbury, to which they seemed to be looking forward as a delightful pleasure trip.
Interesting as the friars were to watch, the river banks were still more fascinating. Except for the landing-stages and a few quays and wharves near London Bridge, they might have been floating on a country river, and Betty thought suddenly of the unending line of warehouses, the smoke of a thousand chimneys, the noise and bustle near the river she had seen only this morning.
“There’s the Strand,” exclaimed Godmother presently, pointing towards the right-hand bank of the stream.
“The Strand?” echoed Betty, scarcely able to believe her eyes.
The Strand along which she had so recently driven, was a bustling street of shops and theatres, with tall-steepled churches at the end of it. Now she saw a country road lined with hedges, across which ran swift streams hurrying to empty their waters in the main river. There were bridges over the streams, and along the tree-shaded road, and across the bridges, rode or trudged a constant procession of people.
“It’s the main road from the City to Westminster, you see,” said Godmother, “so that’s why it’s so crowded.”
“I never knew what the Strand meant before,” declared Betty, all at once enlightened. “A strand is a shore, isn’t it? So that road is just the shore of the river.”
“Just as it is now,” Godmother returned. “Nearly all the narrow streets on the right of the Strand, as you walk up it from Charing Cross station, lead down to the river. But except for lucky people like ourselves, it needs a great deal of imagination to picture it as we see it here, back in the fourteenth century, doesn’t it?”
Betty was now gazing with admiration at a line of beautiful great houses whose gardens sloped to the water and were closed at its brink by a stone gate.
“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 whe
