Messenger's Song

     Messenger's Song

CHORUS AS MESSENGER: 
      Edward the Blond…
he hath come to the walls of Upsetlington
he hath stormed the gates of the town
with cavalry and foot-soldiers and five hundred archers
his cooks and servants, his nobles and mercenaries,
and the mechanical siege-machine.
The brave citizens jeered at them,
‘cross timber wall and shallow ditch,
they laughed down at them and cried,
“Ha ha ha, ye English flounder!
There’ll be no prize, you’ve made a blunder!
We’re glad to find you at our door!”

ANNA: (spoken) This is a story well tuned and hummable.

MESSENGER: But the prood Scots had more power
in their lungs than in their defences.
And the English, with porridge-bowls ‘pon their skulls atop,
poured over the palisades right off the hop,
and the Scots so astonished they could not stop
to thumb an arrow nor raise a sword.

(short pause)

In the time it takes to drain blood from a sheep,
so quickly did the town perish.
Even after our defeat was cold certainty,
the killing went on, in the dim afternoon sunlight.

(bagpipes, the coronach.)

They killed all. Woman, child, old, young,
Neither age nor sex, religion nor rank, could save them.
Monk, nun, seamstress, brewer, all,
butchered by the English King, even as they ran.
Myself, I did see King Edward gaff a child like a codfish
and lift him high in the air.

(the coronach stops)

ANNA: Edward did this?

MESSENGER: (spoken) Ay. But then he stopped.
Child dangling, the mother slain beneath his horse’s hoofs,
the English King stopped.

(sung) The very dust in the air held still.
Mourners quit their grievous dirge.
Soldiers, their swords drawn back in the act of murder,
held.
Strange day, orphaned from the sun as in eclipse,
it stood in dread-full shadow.
Then the handsome Duval, the King’s advisor,
Did ride upon his black charger,
and the two men did regard one another,
with the child’s blood a grim rain upon the King’s face.
Duval looked Edward in the eye. And next we heard
King Edward’s hollow voice – “Arrêtez!”
his tone of broken bone, “Arrêtez!”