The Consecration of Westminster Abbey on Holy Innocents’ Day, 1065
by Maisie Bilston
A cold Month, that of birth and death. We had woken
early, and there was nothing
reading in the black sky, nor in the later paler
hours, nothing reading of good or ill, no thunder
with sun breaking from the east. The songthrush
slept stilly as the barn owl retired, and there came
neither rain nor kindly snow. And the old abbey dog
lay lamely by the henhouse, and the cold
was in our bones at that time. Darkly we felt our way
to morning prayer, passing the stables
where the muddy horses stirred. For this was not
a believing time, you understand, this was not an age
of faith: getting and tending were the work
of our days, so that when the grave old Abbot’s brow
grew stern, foretelling a dry season or flood, we trusted
each with patience, and watched the crop. We read
Latin and watched the crop.
And first there came the bright yellow hour of work,
and then the weak churchlight
following. The King, we knew, lay dying; after a dry
winter the fields were brown, and the cows
thin and restless. But at evening we returned to nothing
changed: only the starling flown, and the heron
gone low over the grey Thames. The horses slept again.
And so we saved or ate as ones who knew
we would live forever: some mornings later, the snow
came, and the King died, and in the orchard the apple
trees grew pale with frost. But we heeded little, owned
and minded little; and in those days our ease still passed
for temperance, as in seasons of plenty our fullness
passed for faith.
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