The ides bode ill in the year of our Lord 1322, or hereabouts. With the collapse of Ely cathedral’s fine tower, not long after rising from the marshy waters, many a wanton woman is being found guilty of bewitching the good stonemasons who constructed that city’s monument. It is this disaster which has led us to the current disgrace of Hugh le Despenser The Younger. He is to be hung, drawn, and quartered here at Hereford, where buildings stand firm against the Devil’s work. Words from The Good Book are written upon The Younger’s body, as preface to the heretic’s punishment. These fine lines describe divine rights of kings, the attributes of usurpers and their followers, and instructions for their execution - Bibles being beneficious in such interpretations. Connections to Ely are NOT tenuous; evidence exceeds our gracious nation’s barometer in proving his heresy. Be warned of idle women who easily confuse droughts, plagues, faulty masonry and challenges to royal lines.

 

Covid-19-20-20 extracting devils thrashing through veins. I sign my name upon my arm to shield myself from the evils coursing within. I swim through watery beds and hear it be said that I’m neither out nor in

 

The validity of a last will & testament is dependent on a testator;

• Being over 18 years of age, or married, or previously married, or thrice divorced and still not learnt that legal contracts are written into the seams of white dresses

• Being of sound mind and not struck by hallucinatory fevers of beavers building multi-storied Covid-19 wards, as announced by town-criers, in medieval cathedrals

• Writing a will. Not while on the death bed, not composed in the head, nor in the heads of others, however convincing conversations may have been. Foresight is an essential thing

• Having the ability to sign the will in front of two witnesses, dragged from plague piles NB they must be living

• Having the ability to sign the will. Ability must be proven, signing names to walls in huge long scrawls of copperplate scrolls - calligraphy having the calibre of legal entities. They reach around the bedroom dais and slip into the abyss of en-suite darkness

                                                                                                                                   [Drawn]

 

Before Hugh le Despenser The Younger can be dispensed with, he shall be strapped to ladders to ensure good views for your good viewing, dear public. We are all in need of heightened entertainment in these straightened times.

 

[The specimen is raised for all to see, after a clumsy pivot by two plague doctors]

                                                                                                                                  [Hung]

 

As he dangles by the neck up there on his ignominious scaffold,

[A momentary asphyxiation]                                   

he must surely recall a certain Woman of the Royal Household

[Leers, cheers, and general rabblesome noises].

She who duly found pleasure in deference to an unholy alliance based on fraudulent thrones

[Boos and stones thrown].

This Woman he thinks of was well-suited to her station. She deferred so much she was prone to lying prostate in front of her superiors and was amenable to much of The Younger’s advances, including the odd strangulation

[Pause for bawdy guffaws. The Younger’s face purples].

It was indicative of that troublesome reign, if further justification were needed, that both King and Queen should be replaced, and their chain of allegiances broken. We suffer such heretics no longer. Hence comes this order for the execution of their follower, The Younger,

[Raucous applause],

for misplacing loyalties and for hands well placed. And as for The Woman? The Younger has indeed already disposed of her, depriving this audience of yet another good execution

[Indignant exclamations].

 

Pause more to breathe

 

‘Are ye banjaxed yet?’

 

The Perpendicular International Gothic style is very on trend. Hence the speed (less than sixty years) in building Ely’s crossing towers. With hindsight, its collapse is a blessing as octagonal spires are surely de facto signifiers of architectural proximity to God? Echoes of curvilinear complexity in Lady Chapels raise Decorated arguments between polychromatic roof bosses about restoring gaudy splendour. They vie across arcades, shouting from richly carved mouths. The nave always has an answer.

 

I lose the will to live

I lose the will

I give instructions on where to find the will

I give instructions on where to find the solicitor who will execute the will

I give instructions on where to find my mind when body bags are un-zipped and construction begins on building internal towers, with wooden ladders, and executions follow, mounted on platforms, in the folds of my brain sulci.

Alveoli squashed into broccoli boil-water.

 

Hear ye!

 

I am the Winter

 

Lungs to bellow, bones to hold, thermostat working internal mechanisms as scaffolders prop hidden passages for viruses to escape down while being hunted by Cavaliers. Or are they Roundheads? Clerestory windows unfinished.

 

κόλλα kola

glue made from ground bone

sizing priming bonding

glew mucilage and stayed awhile

 

 

Gather by the gallows

 

Let it fill ye

 

Three weeks and five long days it lasts, the nights being crueller. The Younger’s body is not yet be-headed. Severed legs follow spectacular disembowelment. He watches with red-lined eyes and pleads for speed. Slow is ordered, for he ordered the curse be upon us.

 [Quartered]

 

Let it be read, lest you think it all in the head

A Town Crier’s Flier