We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (14 page)

The young King spoke, high and womanish and timorous, shifting on his horse.

‘Is it not my uncle of Gloucester?’ he said uncertainly. ‘We are for London. I... I had not thought to see you here.’

Richard Plantagenet did not speak. He went on his knees before the young King, taking the hem of Edward’s gown to his lips. Buckingham did likewise, with flamboyant grace. Vaughan and Haute and Grey were grave-quiet.

‘What means this, good uncle?’ asked Edward, shriller now.

Richard Plantagenet rose, his garments dusty from the ground.

‘My liege lord,’ he said, very low, so that only those near could catch his words, ‘I share your grief in this your noble father’s passing. And by his ordinance I offer you my heart and will. God grant I may show you a true and loyal protection. In every way.’

Edward turned, quivering, to Lord Grey.

‘What ordinance?’ he demanded. ‘You are my guardians; ’tis all settled. And where’s my Uncle Rivers? Speak, sirs, I pray you!’

Haute and Vaughan looked sickly at each other. Grey looked at the ground. Buckingham spoke, imperiously.

‘Your Grace, these gentlemen are no friends of yours. They seek to use you as a pawn in their own sport of kingship. Your uncle Rivers lies at Northampton under close arrest, guarded by my own true men. And this, my lord of Gloucester, is named Protector of your person by royal decree. Ha! they flew high, these counsellors of yours. Your Grace has been—sadly deceived, make no mistake of it...’ His voice grew louder. Richard Plantagenet gave him a swift look, reproving, oddly weary. Buckingham continued.

‘We shall console your Grace,’ he said. ‘The Lord Protector will advise you in the ruling of this realm, and I...’

Edward broke in.

‘My lords, my lady mother and the nobles of her court are pledged to support me,’ he said in a trembling voice.

Buckingham laughed. ‘Ruling is not for women,’ he said gratingly. ‘The Queen has no rightful authority, no more than did Joan of Kent or Katherine of France. Here is one of the old royal blood, as I am. The Lord Protector of England.’ He indicated Richard as a revels-master produces his most cunning player.

‘I knew of no Protectorship,’ said Edward, and then, like April rain, began to weep.

Richard Plantagenet frowned deeply.

‘Hush, Harry,’ he said with sharpness. ‘His Grace is weary and to me, looks ailing. My lord Edward, will you not dismount?’ He stretched out his arms for the boy, who shrank away.

‘Jesu, what have they told you of me?’ Richard said, very low. Then, to the young King: ‘My lord, listen. All that my cousin Buckingham has said is true. Those who nurtured you at Ludlow have also conspired to deprive me of the Protectorship. Your father’s will most treasonously overpassed. But loyalty bound me to his Grace and henceforth to you. Will you not be content with your own father’s ordinance?’

Richard Grey found his tongue at last.

‘My lord of Gloucester will not prevail upon our charge,’ he said haughtily. Buckingham was on him in a flash.

‘Hold your peace, my lord,’ he cried. ‘Soon you shall hold it for ever, traitor and knave. You! Dare you speak when you have laboured with others to destroy me and my cousin of Gloucester? Were it not for Lord Hastings we would be dead in our blood!’ And he raved at them for a space until the Protector raised his hand in silence. I grew a deep cold within me. I was young. I did not wish to die. And it was meet that I should. I had led men for Dorset. I was guilty as he.

Remorse surged over me like a sea wave, beating at my breast, my head, the flesh of my face, catching at my tongue, my wilful wanton tongue that had been so ready to swear allegiance to a bright smile and a fat purse. I am not alone, not alone, I whispered to myself. I looked at the other captains standing motionless around me. I am no worse, no better than they. But they have no brand upon their sword-hand—they gave no little pledge in secret, over a testing flame with fingers locked in those of a good man. Yea, a good man. Through all my wavering wantonness this sang clear, knife-sharp. I looked at him once more, Richard Plantagenet. He was lifting the sobbing boy down from his horse; he kissed him lightly on the brow.

I wished with my heart that my raison had been that of Richard Plantagenet. I looked at his gentlemen of the north: the broad, honest, fierce faces, and with my keen sight picked out the smallest page, dirty with travel at the end of the line. With my whole heart I wished I were he, in Gloucester’s service. Now I should do his will only upon the scaffold.

‘It is best that you ride in comfort,’ he was saying softly to Edward, who wiped his eyes.

‘Yea, a litter for his Grace!’ called Buckingham. Two esquires were already backing a moorland mare into the shafts of the barrel-shaped carriage. The young King said something in a low voice. Richard laughed.

‘No disgrace, good prince,’ he said. ‘My own son goes often in this fashion. When he is ailing.’ The laughter went out of his voice. ‘But then I tell him, rest easy now, and when he is grown, he shall ride my own White Surrey, a puissant beast in truth. No weakness this, my liege.’

Edward ascended into the swaying wagon, and all awaited the Protector’s next command. Many looked anxious. A stiff knot of Buckingham’s foot-soldiers surrounded the Woodville trinity.

‘To London, Dickon?’ asked Sir Francis Lovell.

The Protector shook his head gravely.

‘We shall return to Northampton. Rivers must be taken northward under close vigilance, like these three. But the people of London shall see the mischief he has wrought. Display the barrels of harness through the City gates.’

‘It shall be done, my lord,’ said the glowing Buckingham.

‘And send to Lord Hastings that all is well,’ said Richard, preparing to mount.

Now our fate, thought I. Our destiny, our well-merited doom. Behind, my men-at-arms stood like rock.

Mounted again, Richard turned and surveyed us. White Surrey lifted one great hoof and tore fiercely at the ground. I waited for the Protector to denounce us traitors. He was looking at me, once more straight into the eyes. There was no anger, only regret and a bitter kind of humour. He spoke with sudden swiftness.

‘This accursed livery and maintenance!’ he said—in itself an incautious remark, which brought a very faint whispering from some of his own followers, and a great jolting of the heart to me. He knew, he knew, how easy it had been.

‘Disperse your men,’ he said quietly. ‘Go to your homes, and be good a-bearing. All of you. And come Londonward for King Edward’s coronation, which shall be when Parliament decrees. Come, Harry! Your Grace, are you comfortable?’

They turned, they rode swiftly. They were disappearing in a cloud of dark plumage down the sunlit road. From out of my sight he rode, black on white. I loved him. I took Dorset’s standard from the limp hand of Long Wat beside me, and cast it in the dust.

I set spurs deep and rode after Richard Plantagenet.

He offered no word of reproach and there may even have been some gladness in his look as I knelt before him. He said little, only reminding me that we all had a duty to fulfil, and I was abysmally grateful. Deep within me I would lief have called him Dickon, but those days were gone, and I foreknew that never again would I see that lightness about him. We were no longer eighteen, and Flanders was a time and place far distant.

I overheard something that he said to Sir Francis Lovell on the ride south. Meant for Lovell’s ears only, it warmed me through, and rekindled my shame.

‘I must be a Protector in truth,’ he said, rather sadly. ‘Yea, not only of the lives and comfort of my dear brother’s children, but of this war-weary England. Poor England!’

‘She has bled long,’ said Lovell.

‘God aid me to steer this child’s mind into the way of peace. And’—he turned a hard bright look upon Sir Francis—‘there will be no peace if the Queen’s kin take command. The barons will boil. Certes, this seems like another battle, and I thought I was done with them. A battle of a dangerous, insidious breed.’

Then I heard Lovell bid him take courage, the courage he had never lacked, and as we neared Barnet old memories waked in him, for he fell silent. Also on the journey he talked of Hastings, and at one little church hard by St Albans he dismounted to give thanks kneeling for his own deliverance from the hands of his enemies, and for the Lord Chamberlain’s foresight and fidelity. I fancied Buckingham misliked this; he grew very quiet, and wore a jealous mien. When we crossed Barnet Plain, Richard Plantagenet bade the young King look from his litter and hear of the mighty battle which his uncles had fought there, together with his father, whom God assoil. And how valiantly Lord Hastings had battled; and at Tewkesbury also, and reaching further back into the past, he recounted to the boy Hastings’s marvellous wit and cunning when they rode to rescue the captured King. Buckingham laughed, louder than the Protector, applauding his soft halting tale, flaunting in the sunlight. At mention of Hastings he waxed jealous as a woman.

‘What of
my
prudence and fidelity, lord?’ he asked. Richard, leaning, clasped his arm.

‘Good cousin, I give thanks to God also for your keen wits at this time,’ he said fervently. ‘And for your warlike aid.’

‘Then I need no reward,’ said Buckingham, turning up his eyes.

‘Yea, you shall be rewarded,’ Richard said, with a wry smile. Buckingham grew silent again.

Upon the City walls the populace craned and cheered the King and his entourage. Before us rolled the wagons of harness with the Woodville arms blazoned thereon, and the heralds cried of treason. I thought briefly of Rivers, heavy-guarded at Sheriff Hutton, Grey at Middleham and Vaughan at Pontefract. The air was infected with excitement, Buckingham bowed and smiled, but Richard was sombre, in his gown of coarse black cloth. The little King, horsed again, and in blue velvet, looked bewildered at the array which surged to greet him. Behind the Mayor and Aldermen, scarlet-clad, five hundred burgesses blossomed in violet silk. Grandly they came, and grandly pledged the oath of fealty to Edward the Fifth.

Hastings was there. As we moved down Ludgate Hill he rode with us, and the tension dropped from Richard’s face, revealing plain love and admiration. He was quiet no longer. He jested with the little King, fixing a smile on the boy’s pale puzzlement.

‘Jesu preserve you, William,’ I heard the Protector say, more than once.

‘And you, Sir Richard,’ answered Hastings, his glance flaring to Buckingham. ‘I am glad to see you found a worthy follower. How does your lady wife, my lord?’ This brought a poppy flush to Buckingham’s cheek and a laugh to my own throat, for I had forgotten that this new bright star was wedded to a Woodville.

The little King’s eyes searched the throng as we reached his lodgings at the Bishop of London’s Palace. So obviously cast down was he that Richard asked the nature of his distress. ‘I had thought to see my brother York awaiting me,’ he said plaintively.

Richard Ratcliffe, whose pardon for my actions I had begged upon the road, walked beside me into the Great Hall. He whispered in my ear: ‘His Grace will remain disappointed, an the Queen has aught to do with it. She has the younger boy fast in Sanctuary, together with her daughters, Bishop Lionel, and half the Tower’s treasure!’ He laughed under cover of a shadowed archway. ‘In the instant the plottings were uncovered, her Grace flew into Westminster, hawk-swift. Lord! she burst down the Sanctuary wall for easier passage of her goods. Chests, boxes, fardels of gold and silver, gems of price, furnishings, carpets to clothe the palaces of Europe.’

‘What of Dorset?’

His smile faded. ‘Fled to France, men say,’ he murmured. ‘With more gold, but Sir Edward Woodville had the best pickings—a fleet of stout ships and treasure enough to sink them.’

Buckingham was displeased by the Bishop’s Palace; it was well the Bishop was a little deaf.

‘This is not a fitting lodge for his Grace,’ Buckingham said firmly. ‘Did not Harry Six seek refuge here many days? To me, these chambers smack of weak wits, frail bodies.’

‘Why not the Hospital of St John?’ suggested Francis Lovell.

‘Or Westminster?’ murmured Hastings.

An exclamation burst from Buckingham. ‘What madness!’ he cried. ‘Too near the Sanctuary, my lords. Who knows what treachery is still a-making?’

Richard Plantagenet frowned. ‘The Council shall decide,’ he said sharply. ‘We must do what is best for his Grace. Remember always, he is our charge, our duty.’

Buckingham was unquelled. ‘I have it!’ he said, with a sudden finger-snapping. ‘Our King must enjoy the royal custom. The Tower, my lords.’

I glanced towards the boy. He was talking courteously with the Bishop of London. The Protector spoke.

‘It is a large, bewildering place for one of tender years,’ he said. ‘Those apartments grow hot in June. I remember my last sojourn there... my wife was ill... the mists rise from the river at evening. Nay, my lords. The Council shall decide.’

‘Sir,’ Buckingham said obstinately, ‘is it not the privilege of kings to occupy the Tower before their crowning?’ He moved closer, taking the Protector’s sleeve. ‘And is it not a place of safety for the boy against his enemies? From those who labour to seize his royal person?’

Hastings, with Woodville-anger doubtless aboil in his mind, said ‘Yea!’ loudly.

The Protector sighed. ‘There is much to be done,’ he said. ‘The bidding letters to be sent for those who will receive knighthood at our sovereign’s hand; the coronation gowns to be made. And the settling of Edward’s crowning day.’

Buckingham leaned eagerly. ‘When should that be, my lord?’

‘In good time,’ said the Protector. ‘The Nativity of St John Baptist, mayhap. It is not long to Midsummer. But we must have no dissension. I must persuade her Grace to leave Sanctuary. The Coronation cannot proceed without the Queen-Dowager.’

Hastings said ‘Yea!’ again, so loudly that I looked at him. I know my eye has a strange colour, and pierces through, but that was surely no reason for him to flush and lick his lip and turn away completely out of countenance, for he had looked at me before and I at him, many times.