Authors: Bruce Holsinger
A Burnable Book (33 page)
Winchester Palace
T
he thickening crowd flowed toward the gate facing New Rents. The palace yards were festooned with banners showing innumerable colors, England’s heraldry on full display for the coming of King Richard. Winchester’s gateyard was normally ankle-deep in muck and dung from the bishop’s stables, and often it could be difficult to tell that the area was paved. Now the stones at my feet practically glistened, as if Wykeham had sent his entire household out for a week with brushes and vinegar. Even the scent was invigorating, with fresh juniper and rosemary underfoot. Over it all loomed Mark Blythe’s pearl-and-oyster reliefs, tracing a pattern that summoned one of the clearest lines in the prophecy.
In palace of prelate with pearls all appointed.
By the next bell, I brooded, King Richard could be dead.
I fell in place beside Thomas Pinchbeak, who was speaking earnestly to Sir Howard Payne. I listened in for a while, an interested smile fixed on my face, then moved to a spot off the gateyard’s pavement to await the king’s arrival from the hunting lodges at Easthampstead, feeling alone. The sky had darkened, hints of another May shower in the air. The moist breeze deadened voices, casting a clammy pall over the hushed conversations preceding the royal entrance.
Katherine Swynford, with Philippa at her side, took a position in the rearmost echelon of ladies; no cruel whispers that day, as the duchess was absent. In the faces of those closest to the gate—Wykeham, Gaunt, Oxford, Joan of Kent—I read a dark foreboding, as all seemed to be exchanging glances of secret knowledge and hidden intent. To my mind the entire assemblage felt taut, as if a bowstring had been pulled back to its limit, the archer’s fingers on the verge of release.
If an attack on the king came, it would take place soon after his arrival. The bishop and his company were to greet the king and his court inside the palace’s great gate. Together the two companies, the episcopal and the royal, would make their way to the pavilion to hear mass. The singing of the processional hymn would begin upon the commingling of the companies, and conclude before the introit.
From outside the walls came the loud blasts of trumpets, the call of the chief herald, the roar of the Southwark commons. Hinges groaned, heads turned. Through the wide opening onto New Rents the royals appeared on foot, having dismounted before the gate. The king’s guard had already clustered around Richard in a tight circle. Wykeham’s own guards formed a solid line marching forward. The gate closed behind them.
The greeting was swift and simple. King Richard entered the palace grounds and came to a stop before Wykeham. The two exchanged bows, then the king took the bishop’s hand and kissed his ring. Palm in palm, the two turned for the gardens as their retinues fell in behind them. With that the processional to St. Dunstan began, the first stanza intoned by the Austin canons of St. Mary Overey as the melody filled the courtyard.
Ave Dunstane, praesulum
Sidus decusque splendidum,
Lux vera gentis Anglicae,
Et ad Deum dux praevie.
The singing continued as the two companies turned to process to mass. Those who knew the tune or words joined in with singing or humming, though in those agonizing moments I forced myself to keep my attention solely on the king.
Now the second stanza. My mind Englished the lines as I followed the king’s progress.
In you do we place our trust, in your sight do we lift up our hands . . .
The crowd of guests started filling in behind as the magnates processed past the foreyard. I mouthed the next line, appropriate to the occasion:
Mucrone gentis barbarae,
“the sword of a barbarous race.” I thought of Dunstan’s famed role in prophesying the Danish invasions, of King Richard’s present role in the holding off of France. As in the
De Mortibus
itself, past and present here collided with the force of a hurled stone on a palace wall.
I positioned myself at the front right edge of the crowd. Here my view of the central group was now somewhat obstructed. Looking around, I saw behind me the lip of an old, disused well, long since filled in. I stepped up on the stones. The extra height gave me a clear view of the king.
Richard and Wykeham had reached the entrance to the hall, which was standing open. The uppermost members of the company positioned themselves in a wide arc around the two magnates. Oxford stood just steps from the king. Behind him walked Sir Stephen Weldon, his palm on his swordhilt.
They turned at the passage to the kitchens, heading for the pavilion and mass. All appeared well. No attack seemed to be forming, no apparent threats to the king that I could see. Would all this worry, all the trouble of these last months, be for nothing? I realized I had been holding my breath since the song’s previous stanza. I started to exhale—
A flash of metal, in the darkened passage.
The butchers.
I looked around, but no one else seemed to have noticed the movement. I realized why: thanks to the well’s stone lip, I alone stood at that particular angle to that corner of the passage.
Now the hymn’s final verse, which extolled Dunstan’s role in bringing hope, peace, and light to the world.
Per Te Pater spes unica . . .
Movement in the kitchen passage. Yes, the butchers, huddled in a bunch, assembled to rush the king. I was sure of it now, even from forty feet away. I looked around in a panic.
The voices of the Overey canons broke into harmony as they descanted on the second line.
Per Te Proles pax unica . . .
I stared in a cold horror even as my ears rang with the hopeful line. The butchers of Southwark were massed less than twenty feet from King Richard. Their leader was in front. He held a cleaver in one hand, a long knife in the other. Ten butchers at least, bristling with blades. Despite the king’s guard, how safe could Richard be?
“Your Highness!” I called out weakly over the din of the hymn, attracting annoyed looks from those nearby.
With no regard for propriety or my own fate, I started to push through the ranks, my gaze still fixed on the kitchen passage. The butchers crept forward in the shadows, still unnoticed by the crowd, all attention on the king. I pushed someone aside. “What in—” Thomas Pinchbeak fell back as I passed, tripping over his stick.
Now an arm and a leg—did no one else see them?
“Your Highness!” I was almost there. One of Richard’s rear guards saw me coming. He reached for his sword.
The canons descanted the third line. I pushed toward the frontmost ranks, pointing madly back at the passage.
“Your Highness!” I yelled. I was shoved aside, by whom I would never know, and fell against a pavilion post.
Et Spiritus Lux—
Spiritus!
“Richard!” I cried as I came to my feet.
The singing stopped. Heads turned, including the king’s.
“
For the commons!
” With a hoarse chorus of shouts the shadows came to life, and the butchers flew as one from the kitchen passage, twenty blades raised for the attack. For an awful moment all I saw was a tangle of arms bristling with blades, some grotesquely spiked machine of war hurtling toward the king. There was glee on their faces, a righteous madness bellowing from their opened mouths.
There was a scream. Wykeham leapt backwards. King Richard froze before his assailants.
Then, with a swift rush of air, the sky fell. A cascade of arrows took the butchers in their backs, necks, and chests. The entire group collapsed in place, most of them past agony before they hit the ground. I looked up. Royal archers, at least twenty of them, lined the inner roof on three sides, new arrows already notched.
I gaped at the spectacle. The butchers were dead or dying, pools of new blood glistening on the stone. A pile of corpses. Richard had been safe the entire time.
Winchester Palace
E
dgar Rykener saw the shower of arrows before he saw his brother. At first he assumed Gerald was among the attackers, and the sight of his death was like an arrow in his own neck, so sudden and violent it was. Then he looked at the kitchen passage and saw Gerald’s face, pale in the shadows. His eyes were wide, registering his boyish shock at what his fellow butchers had done. Edgar’s heart soared. Gerald turned and fled.
As the crowd started to react to the attack Edgar dodged around a privet hedge and sprinted for the kitchen gate. Gerald was just disappearing through a second passageway toward the west courtyard. Edgar followed him as the shouts spread in their wake. The courtyard was deserted aside from an old horse and an empty wagon. Gerald sprinted across the space and dodged left at the wagon, angling for the west tower.
“Gerald!” Edgar called ahead before his brother disappeared. Gerald hesitated, turned.
“Edgar! What the—”
“No time.” He could hear the terror in Gerald’s voice, could feel it in his own. He looked back and saw no one, though judging by the shouts there were pursuers close to the courtyard. “Keep going.”
Gerald ran up to the next landing. It gave on to a poorly lit chamber above the bishop’s lower gallery. He turned toward Edgar, kicking up dust.
Edgar embraced him, loving him for his defiance of Grimes, and felt his brother’s hesitation before he returned the hug. “He’s gone now, Gerald. Grimes can’t hurt you now.”
Gerald was trembling. “Now I’ll only be hanged,” he murmured.
Edgar didn’t doubt it. He looked around, casting for a plan. The space was filled with old rugs and broken furniture, muffling the urgent shouts from below. “Wykeham’s probably rounding up all the kitchen folks as we stand here, seeing if others are part of it,” he said. “You have to get out of the palace, and right soon.”
“How—how?”
Edgar looked at him in the darkness, asking himself the same question. Then he had it. From his side bag he removed the bundle of clothes and thrust them into Gerald’s arms. Gerald looked down. He spread out the dress, then let out a cruel laugh.
“Oh, so now
I’m
to be the swerver?”
Edgar glared at him. “You’ve a better thought?”
Gerald hesitated.
“It’s the only way, Gerald,” said Edgar. “Otherwise you’re like to be caught and killed this very hour. Now,
put it on
.”
Reluctantly Gerald eased himself out of his rough breeches, tunic, and apron, then pulled the dress over his head. He tugged and smoothed until the garment, a one-piece woolen affair full of patches and stitching, sat more or less right.
Edgar stepped back and appraised him in the half light. He wet his fingertips to wipe some grime off his brother’s cheeks, then teased the strands of hair pushing out of the plain coif he had tied around Gerald’s head. Her brother’s voice hadn’t yet cracked despite his age, no whiskers on him, and his thin-soled shoes could pass for a scullery maid’s. He figured it would all do for the purpose. He walked to the top of the stairs and listened. Voices, two or three men approaching the tower. He turned back and pulled on Gerald’s arm.
“Straight for the postern, Gerald. Then the Pricking Bishop on Rose Alley.” He handed him a few coins. “Give these to that old sheath on the steps, and wait for me inside.”
Gerald looked at him, and Edgar wanted to laugh despite the danger. He put a hand to the back of his brother’s head and pushed it down. “Eyes to the ground and you’ll be fine.”
Halfway down the stairs Edgar gave his brother a gentle push. Gerald didn’t look back, but as he entered the west yard Edgar watched him through a narrow aperture along the tower wall. Gerald passed two guards, but neither spared a glance for the ragged servingwoman coming from the tower. More guards in the yard now, searching out conspirators.
Now for his own escape. Edgar looked down at the courtyard, forming an idea. The horse-drawn cart was one of many in Southwark that doubled as a pageant wagon at festival time. Though the wagon itself was empty and wouldn’t do, its undercarriage was obscured by the frayed cloths hanging over each side. He had to get to that wagon.
He waited for the last guard to disappear into one of the surrounding buildings. When he was gone Edgar climbed onto the stone sill, threw his legs over, hung for a moment, and dropped, meeting the courtyard pavers with a painful impact. He stood, ankles still sound. He darted for the wagon and slid beneath the cloths. Wedging himself between the clouts, he took his weight off his arms and tested the fit. It would work. He waited patiently, his mind on Gerald, until the cartman returned to the courtyard. After a word with the guards, he took the horse’s reins. Edgar felt a lurch. The cart moved slowly moved toward the palace’s back gate.
Winchester Palace
T
he king’s guard had encircled Richard, swords drawn. The crowd, moments ago riven with cries of fright, had quieted itself to a low murmur. Most were huddled in small knots, watching ghoulishly as it became known that the danger had passed and a pile of bodies lay on the ground, and a search was on for any remaining conspirators. Hodge ordered the corpses hauled off, a swift task involving several handcarts and a dozen servants. Others brought out buckets of water and washed the blood off the pavers. The bishop spoke to the king, and it seemed the procession would continue to mass when a loud voice filled the air.
“Your Highness,” said Robert de Vere, in a voice that carried through the assemblage.
“What is it, Oxford?” The king looked unsteady, sickened.
“With your leave, sire, I wish to speak.” The king nodded. The earl approached Richard with his right arm raised. He took a slow circle around the front of the pavilion, displaying something for all of us to see. “Your eyes and ears, please,” he called out. The earl’s hand clutched a book. A thin volume, with a simple, unembossed binding, and no clasps.
“What’s the meaning of this, Oxford?” the king demanded.
“We have been preparing for this day with grim resolve, Your Highness,” said Oxford. “In this book lies the key to this attempt on your life. The book is called the
Liber de Mortibus Regum Anglorum
. In our tongue, ‘The Book of the Deaths of English Kings.’ ” The title sent a thrill through the guests. “The work’s author is named Lollius. A writer of ancient lineage, inking these prophecies during the reign of King William.”
Things had moved so quickly between the king’s entrance and the death of the butchers that I had had little time to gather my thoughts. My first reaction to what had just happened was to assume that the plan to kill the king, whoever its instigator, had been thwarted, the prophecy proven false by a hail of arrows. Richard, after all, was alive and unharmed.
Yet now, with the disconcerting sight of the book in Oxford’s hands, I was forced to wait as the ingenious machinery of the plot unfolded before my weak eyes. After so many weeks of ignorance I mistrusted my own reactions, and felt at the mercy of the many forces around me—beginning with the intimidating presence of Robert de Vere.
“Who was this Lollius?” asked the king. “Was he an Englishman?”
“Little is known of him, Your Highness.” Oxford hesitated. “Though his works are in favor with the followers of John Wycliffe.”
“Preposterous!” thundered John of Gaunt, who had been standing silent since the attack. “Wycliffe’s dissent was a theological one, Your Highness, not a political one.”
Oxford gave the duke a withering look. “It is known that a copy of this work was made by Sir John Clanvowe, and that it has been circulated among Wycliffe’s followers.” His cold eyes found me in the crowd. “There are copies of this book being handed around in their conventicles, Your Highness.”
“You lie, Oxford,” Gaunt taunted him.
“Silence, Lancaster!” King Richard barked, causing a stir of frightened awe among the assembly. Despite their private disagreements, no one had ever seen the king dress down his uncle in public. This whole affair had just taken a dangerous new direction. I felt sick.
Gaunt stared in disbelief at his newly assertive nephew. King Richard turned to Oxford. “Continue, Oxford.”
“As you wish, Your Highness,” said Oxford with a puerile sneer at Gaunt. “We have recovered this book through the devices of Master Thomas Pinchbeak, appointed serjeant-at-law by good King Edward.”
“It is true, Your Highness.” Pinchbeak, having risen from his tumble, stepped forward and knelt gingerly before the king. King Richard looked at the powerful lawman: his leg lame from war, his back bent with compensation of his injury, the serjeant’s stripes on his arm. Here was an unimpeachable source confirming Oxford’s claims, a serjeant-at-law, appointed by patent of Richard himself.
“What is in these prophecies, Oxford?” asked the king. “Tell us.”
“Certainly,” said Oxford. “The prophecies, Your Highness, foretell the deaths of thirteen kings, beginning with the great William, Norman conqueror of the Saxons. Their deaths are related in detail and with an accuracy that matches the accounts set forth in our chronicles.” He went on to give several examples from the
De Mortibus,
all of them by now intimately familiar to me.
I watched the king’s reaction to the earl’s masterful discoursing. Richard was trying to remain impassive, though he was clearly affected by what he heard. By the time Oxford reached the death of the late King Edward, the crowd, I could tell, had been swayed. All that remained was for Oxford to convince the king that the final prophecy had been foiled.
“Yet it is the thirteenth prophecy, Your Highness, that most concerns us today.” Oxford’s voice found a pitch that matched the insidious content of the matter. “For in this final prophecy, your own death is shadowed forth in lines that leave little doubt concerning the day, place, and manner of the plot.”
“Read it, Robert,” Richard ordered, feigning a confidence belied by the deep blush that shot up his cheeks. Behind him, Bolingbroke looked similarly stricken.
The earl intoned the final prophecy:
“At Prince of Plums shall prelate oppose
A faun of three feathers with flaunting of fur,
Long castle will collar and cast out the core,
His reign to fall ruin, mors regis to roar.
By bank of a bishop shall butchers abide,
To nest, by God’s name, with knives in hand,
Then springen in service at spiritus sung.
In palace of prelate with pearls all appointed,
By kingmaker’s cunning a king to unking,
A magnate whose majesty mingles with mort.
By Half-ten of Hawks might shender be shown.”
Oxford looked up at the king as he recited the final line.
“On day of Saint Dunstan shall Death have his doom.”
The crowd erupted. During the reading of the prophecy more of the king’s personal guard had stepped forward. Twenty powerful soldiers now surrounded the company of magnates, their intention to apprehend—and, I feared, likely to slay without thought—anyone named as a conspirator. I wondered how many of them were truly the king’s men, and what portion fed from Oxford’s trough.
King Richard, regaining some of his composure, stood straight, a hand at his belt. “Unravel this prophecy for us, Oxford,” he commanded.
“Yes, Your Highness.” Oxford looked around. “I have consulted with men of Cambridge and Oxford, sire. Our wisest masters of theology. They have glossed this ancient prophecy, explaining its words, its symbols. I shall interpret it for you in turn, word for word—beginning with the ‘prelate,’ a great man of the realm who opposes the ‘faun of three feathers.’ ”
“Three feathers,” King Richard repeated, slowly nodding. “My father’s crest?”
“The very same,” Oxford said with a brisk nod. “Everyone knows the legend of your father at the Battle of Crécy, the ostrich feather seized from the crown of King John. You are the faun, sire, the offspring of Prince Edward.”
“What about this ‘flaunting of fur’?”
Oxford gave an exaggerated shrug. “Like the three feathers, it must refer to heraldry. That part of a lord’s livery consisting of animal fur.” He looked up and cast a meaningful glance over at Gaunt. “Points of ermine, would be my best guess.”
The king slowly turned his head, staring at the band of ermine points on Gaunt’s collar. Lancaster looked at Oxford with a searing hatred.
“Go on,” rattled the king.
“The next lines are clearer,” Vere continued. “A ‘long castle’ will collar and cast out the core. The core is the ‘
cor,
’ Latin for ‘heart.’ You are the White Hart, Your Highness, to be cast out and your reign to ‘fall ruin.’ The Latin phrase ‘
mors regis,
’ ‘death of a king,’ suggests that the deposition will come at the expense of your life.”
The king had gone pale.
“The prophecy even tells us the time, place, and manner of your death, Your Highness. The place: ‘by bank of a bishop,’ in the ‘palace of prelate with pearls all appointed.’ And here we all are, gathered at the palace of the bishop of Winchester on the banks of the Thames, with these fine carvings of pearls adorning the walls above our heads.” He spread his right hand, drawing all eyes up to Blythe’s ornate pearl carvings.
“And the time,” said Oxford. “We knew all along that the attack would take place on Dunstan’s Day. Yet the prophecy is more specific than that. Our killers are to spring forth ‘in service’—during the mass procession, Your Highness—‘at spiritus sung’: in other words, at the singing of the word ‘
spiritus,
’ a word which appears in the final verse of the processional proper to this day. And so it was: at the very moment this word was sung, your would-be assassins sprang forth to attack you.”
“Yes,” said King Richard, nodding weakly in the face of Oxford’s relentless explication.
“And finally,” said the earl without a pause, “we come to the killers themselves, and their weapons. Here the
De Mortibus
reads as follows: ‘By bank of a bishop shall butchers abide,’ ‘with knives in hand.’ ” Oxford waved a hand toward the spot where the butchers had met their deaths, bloodied on the ground. “You’ve seen our butchers, Your Highness. You’ve seen their knives.”
Finally, with a slow turn, he pointed to John of Gaunt. “And here we have our ‘kingmaker,’ this cunning conspirator intent on seizing your crown—in the words of the prophecy, ‘a magnate whose majesty mingles with mort.’ Your death, sire, and the death of England. Had we not discovered this conspiracy you would be dead, Your Highness. I give you the man thinly disguised in the prophecy as ‘long castle’—none other than your treacherous uncle, the Duke of Lancaster.”
John of Gaunt had few friends at Winchester Palace that day. The lawn and pavilion were shot through with an uneasy silence, as all present shared a common thought: what was to prevent the king’s men from slaying Lancaster on the spot? With an assassination attempt foiled and the evidence of his uncle’s guilt in hand, what would prevent King Richard from ordering his uncle’s execution on the palace grounds? Such an order would be perfectly justified before all these witnesses—in fact, I reasoned, it would be much safer to kill Gaunt now rather than wait for a legal proceeding, which would give the forces loyal to Lancaster time and opportunity to redress Oxford’s lethal accusation against the powerful duke.
King Richard looked from his uncle to Oxford to his guard, struggling within himself. I closed my eyes, waiting.
“Pray stay your hand, sire.”
A woman’s voice, shattering the silence. I opened my eyes, and through the clearing blur saw that the speaker was Joan of Kent, mother of King Richard. The king turned with visible relief toward the countess as she stepped forward from the edge of the crowd.
“What is it, Countess?” he said in a quavering voice.
“Our lord the Earl of Oxford has given us a remarkable performance,” said Joan with a tight smile. “Why, he’s almost convinced me that my husband’s brother is behind this attempt on your life today. That it was Lancaster’s hand guiding the men who nearly killed my son. Oxford’s account is convincing, and you are right to take this dark prophecy with the utmost seriousness.”
She looked around and raised her voice. “Yet there is one additional piece to this strange puzzle. As Lord Oxford knows very well, this book of prophecies has traveled from abroad wrapped in a cloth, a piece of embroidery fitted to the manuscript like a glove to a hand.”
Oxford looked delighted to have an unexpected ally. “Your noble mother is correct, Your Highness. The book and the cloth have traveled together. The cloth went missing and hasn’t been recovered.”
“The cloth has been found,” said Joan of Kent. Murmurs of surprise, and she held it bunched up above her head. Oxford looked at the embroidery like a dog at a cutlet. “The cloth came to me, Your Highness, by the hand of the Mother Superior of St. Leonard’s Bromley, Prioress Isabel, who was brought the cloth by one of her former laysisters. It reveals with no room for doubt the identity of the agent behind this conspiracy.” She paused for effect. “May I unfurl the cloth, Your Highness?”
“Please, Countess,” said Richard, almost pathetically grateful to have his moment of decision deferred.
“And with your consent, Lord Oxford?” The earl responded with a courtly nod.
With a flick of her shapely wrist, Joan snapped the cloth open. I craned my neck and smiled at the result of Millicent Fonteyn’s handiwork. Where Lancaster’s heraldry had once been embroidered into the cloth, there now appeared the arms of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, emblazoned on a mounted knight, his sword thrust in the breast of an unarmed king bearing Richard’s colors. A perfect substitution, and I found myself in a state of awe at the ingenuity of Bromley—and pleased that I had suggested the countess rather than Swynford as the agent of its revealing.
After the appropriate exclamations, everyone started speculating wildly. King Richard looked from his mother to the earl. “What do you say to this, Oxford?” he demanded.
“This—” sputtered Oxford, as word and sight of the cloth spread quickly through the crowd, “this is absurd, Your Highness! An outrage of the highest order!”
“Who could disagree?” Joan of Kent said. “This cloth throws the whole of the prophecy into doubt, Your Highness. Many would say your close friendship with the Earl of Oxford renders the man half a king already, so the ‘kingmaker’ could just as well point to him. And heaven knows that this ‘flaunting of fur,’ supposedly Lancaster’s ermine points, could as easily refer to Robert de Vere, who ladies about wrapped in his fur-lined hood!”
There was scattered laughter as Oxford’s hand went to his hood, lined in fox.
The countess was not finished. “God Himself knows how deeply I have despised my late husband’s brother.” Lancaster said nothing. Joan approached her son and took his hand. “But he loves you, Richard, as does his son.” A brief glance at Bolingbroke. “You are the duke’s liege lord, and he is your most loyal subject of all.”
