We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (23 page)

Then I heard Northumberland’s party leaving. With spur-song and hush of velvet they were gone, out into Bread Street, but the faint rustle behind me told that one of them remained.

I heard him swallow and set his cup down. The Flemish Friedeswide, the tap-wench, came to me smoothing her kirtle.

I asked her: ‘Who sups there, alone?’ She peeped round the corner of the booth.

‘’Tis but a poor old monk,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Brother Jasper, they call him.’

A customer shouted for her, pressed a mark into her hand, put his fist into her bosom. I heard steps behind me, as one unseen joined Brother Jasper. There was a trifle of whispering, like rats in the woodwork.

‘So, how goes it?’

‘Well enough,’ said the new voice.

‘From shore to shore?’

‘Hardly, my friend. Scarcely.
Yet
.’

A deep sigh. ‘Time hangs.’

‘Rather time than ourselves...’ Murmurings. ‘... he sends greeting to all his followers... something embittered by delay... he is a passionate young man.’

‘Yet my lady’s commands must be obeyed.’

‘Yea, forsooth, slowly and with great care. A pinprick here, another there, until the time be full...’

‘Holy God, I cannot wait!’ Sudden emotion charged the monk’s voice.

‘But wait you must,’ said the other sharply. ‘Dame, bring double-beer!’ and of a sudden he began talking of fee-farms and the price of corn. Such a curious conversation would not have stuck in my mind had I been happy and sound, as once I was, but now I listened to everything, in mortal dread.

As I moved towards the door, my thigh struck a table at which sat an ancient man, his crusted beard dribbling in spilled drink. He cursed me wantonly. Angerless, I clapped down a coin in recompense and made to pass on. To my surprise he swept the money from the table and glared at me drunkenly.

‘This will na’ buy me wine.’

‘Wine is rich for an old belly.’ I saw red gold clutched tightly in his hand. Too feeble for a cut-pouch, too silly for an extortionist. Drinking Rhenish in the Mermaid. His eyes fixed on my livery and the Boar emblem at my breast. Then, leaning, he let fall a gob of spittle near to where I stood.

‘King’s man!’ he said softly, and it could have been the worst oath, the cruellest miscalling in the world. So I waited, not angry, no longer wondering. He rose a little from his bench, wavered and sat again.

‘He will be judged.’ His eyes were closed. Sweat crowned their lids. ‘He will be judged for’t. God in His Heaven will punish him. Mark me well.’

I could have called him out for blasphemy, heresy, treason. Yet I feared his words so much that I called only Friedeswide, said, a puny potentate: ‘Serve him no more drink,’ and passed out into the wind that whipped my eyes to tears, so that I of keen sight could not even see across Friday Street. Therefore even had I looked back into the dark tavern at those who had murmured behind me, I would not have recognized the marguerite of Reynold Bray, Lady Beaufort’s clerk, or the face of Jasper Tydder, blood-kin to the Dragon.

I could have spoken to Lovell, Norfolk, Ratcliffe; to any of the King’s lawyers and chaplains. I could have described those who spoke against his Grace and they would have been discovered in their hovels, for all were lowly and mean and stupid, the sort King Richard loved best, going by his statutes. They were so dreadful to me. Their faces hung mouthing above my sleep; The Mermaid whisper was, I think, the worst. In all its drunken utterance it was passive, logical. One night I awoke howling like a dog. For I had seen Richard, black-clad, his feet upon the Boar, and the Boar was devouring something...

I spoke only to Margetta, for I feared the truth.

Tib had heard naught. I made my lady question her and she, in turn, questioned me, touching my face with her velvet fingers, saying I grew lined and old and surly, and that she loved me. So I closed all the doors and windows and told her a very little, as much as I dared. She went and picked up the infant, Richard, and called Josina, whom she held at her knee, close-clipped.

‘Well, what then?’ she said, her voice hard and steady. ‘He is King, is he not?’

‘Yea, anointed in the sight of God. And in the sight of God, I love him still. Am I, in my own heart, a traitor?’

‘So!’ she said. ‘Enthroned, he rules England. You prate of whisperings: can they uncrown a King?’

She was holding Josina so tight that the child squirmed away. She looked down at the babe’s head.

‘Do the whispers speak sooth, my lord?’

But my thoughts were running, leaping like a third voice under the weight of our conversation. My thoughts were nonsense, sliding into a vision inopportune. Myself, a young knave in Kent. My guardian had had cut for me two dozen arrows, tipped with the grey goose wing. I, churlishly lingering on a hold, had spoiled the shoot, seeing my fine new dart thrust out across a stream. In a wheatfield I sought it, hearing already my tutor’s scolding, dreading the lash across my buttocks. In every furrow I had parted wet green blades, running, bending, groping. Even so did I chase my own elusive thoughts, seeking the shape of that third voice which uttered words heard somewhere once before, all in a hurry...

A young, tearful voice: ‘...to destroy your Grace, not by the sword...’

Young Harry the page, regal in his mud.

Margetta was talking. ‘He is secure—only the Tydder threatens, and he’s a coward, by. all reckoning... Richard cannot be slain by a whisper.’

(‘Not by the sword, your Grace—not by the sword...’)

‘You do not answer me,’ said Margetta, and suddenly a tear dropped upon the babe’s head. ‘O God, did any labour to harm my children, I would haunt him with a curse, unto my last breath. I would find blackest poison to sweat the bowels from him who touched my babes... I would give my body to be burned...’

I had them all against my heart. My gold collar rasped Josina’s cheek and she began to cry, which set the infant bawling. At other times we would have laughed, been gay.

‘Hush,’ I said, ‘hush,’ and rocked them, like a cumbersome wetnurse.

Even now, and now especially, I shrink from the remembrance of one evening in Nottingham. He had ever disliked the place, and it brought to me the echo of our sleeplack and his night-long prayer, in the time when we rode together against Clarence and Warwick. Devout he was! I tried to look upon him without love. Devout he was still, but had kingship changed him?

While climbing the hundred steps of the sheer face of Nottingham’s grey fortress, I caught the thread of his heart and knew him determined to lift the gloom of that castle with gaiety. In truth, he had food for rejoicing; for the Scots were clamouring for peace.

It was the day the envoy came, monstrous tall with great grey eyes and the tartan of Lyle, to stand before the king who had given his country so many hard buffets. I had heard that such as he were wont to give terrible skirling cries in battle, like the fiends of Hell, yet there he stood, calm enough, and wondering ‘was there no better way to end the matter?’ Queen Anne, under her state canopy, smiled a little at the Scot and pressed her hands together, as if also hoping the business mended, and then, mayhap, a release from Nottingham, which was not far north enough for Anne. And a bird came rap-tapping at the high rock-hewn window over her head, dancing on a sprig of wild roses and tapping as if the window were a snail. The halting negotiations continued; the Scot was difficult to comprehend—at times the King spoke French and things went better, while in idleness I watched that bird, who tapped and tapped discourteously above the royal dais, and then seemed to court madness, for it ceased suddenly and began to dash itself at the oriel’s pane ever and anon, its soft body thudding against the cruel glass. After a while the King remarked the interruption, motioned a page to drive the bird away. He glanced swiftly at his Queen, leaned to her, whispered, then asked the Scot:

‘Will my lord continue the discussion over supper?’

The gathering in the hall dispersed, and outside I heard men talking.

‘His Grace has ordered a banquet this evening, and entertainment.’

‘What, for the kilted one, of the red beard and knees?’

‘Nay, for the Queen’s pleasure; he thought she seemed cast down.’

What kind of a man, thought I. What manner of man? Ruthless and secretive, the purveyor of black and bloody things, and yet, so kindly? Then I thought, in my great cleverness, of the Archer’s Paradox: the loosed arrow strikes a course not followed by the string—it is bent a little away on one side. It regains its straight trajectory on following the bow. Was Richard Plantagenet then, a paradox, cast in flesh? I summoned all my loathing and looked on him, and his quiet face bemused me.

The Scot seemed impressed by the revel. Me, I moved among the thronging dancers, courting the fairest; I pleasured myself; I watched the King. I listened, idly though. There were no whispers at Nottingham.

‘Heard you the news? Francis of Brittany has gone mad.’

‘Then there’s an end to the King’s hopes of a treaty.’

‘Nay, the reverse. Landois is weak, and hated by the nobles. He’ll be glad to treat with Richard. Mark me.’

‘And where will the Pretender be then?’ Loud, joyful laughter.

‘Restored back to his native soil, given a beating, sent supperless...’

‘And we could leave this thorny spot.’

‘The waiting galls me too...
will
he invade, think you?’

‘Certes, I fear his lady mother more than he! ’Tis against nature for women to be so learned!’

Verily, they were gay.

What of Richard, and Anne? He danced with none other, and for a soldier he was graceful, while she was like apple-bloom, drifting on the wind. Slowly, as the coming of spring after an iron-fierce winter, her sombre mien faded; she yielded to joy. He took her in the fair old basse-danse: ‘
Belle, qui tiens ma vie
’. As she hopped and twirled her saffron silks flew out and her Florentine collar of pearl-and-silver, the King’s gift, wept beauty in the dancing light. The candles wore down. He kissed her, and she broke a rose from the table-trimmings and placed it in his cap.

I watched them, in their last moment of happiness.

It was not late when they left the Hall, hand in hand. The minstrels were packing their instruments away. There had been a woman from the town, who sang with a fiddle, a sweet, mystic song of love and death. The air was warm with crushed flowers and the breath of wine. A trailing spray of white violets clung to my shoe as I climbed the stair. It was not quite dusk, so I went up on the battlements. The air curled about my face, soft; it would be a fine day on the morrow. At each corner the lookout stood like granite. I leaned under the greenish sky, sniffing the breeze, scanning the darkening plain. Below, the town covered its fires; each little point of light wavered, burnt up bright, and was stifled to blackness. My sight was good that night, keen and far to where the winding road, outlined by pale thorn trees, clove through the meadow; the road north, for which Anne yearned. One star was out, and half the moon pricked my sight. A boy I once knew had seen God among the stars, in a great trailing grey robe, and thought his day of judgment to be at hand, and swooned, never the same after. I looked swiftly downward, over the sweep of rock, past the jagged stones girdling the foot of the castle, and saw a horseman riding through the bailey. A lone horseman, who rode so slowly that it was easy for my eye to catch at his dusky colours, and know him for a royal herald; but his face bowed low upon his breast as if he were loath to enter Nottingham. As loath to look upward as was that boy, after seeing the Judgment of God.

There were too many of us, outside the royal chamber. With scarcely room to breathe in the corridor, it was like a beehive, the priests muttering all together in the confined space. I thought then: there should be only one, or two, to knock and. enter. I would not be that one, but I am here, who would fain be elsewhere. When the Squire of the Body drew back the latch he looked frightened, unsure. He murmured; ‘The King and Queen have retired,’ and pointed at the inner chamber, then Norfolk bent to whisper in his ear and we went in, without a sound, the priests no longer murmuring of comfort, the boards beneath too dolorous to creak.

Richard and Anne sat by the dying fire, robed for the night. Her hair hung down, pale against the flames, and his hands, nurse-tender, caressed its wealth. He rose upon seeing us, while Anne’s women moved nervously to her side. He asked, with less annoyance than I would have shown: ‘What means this?’

He glanced from one to the other, at the white, crowding faces, and none spoke.

‘Ill news?’ he asked.

Norfolk cleared his throat, a dreadful, grating noise.

‘Ill news, Sire.’

The King came to us, brows drawn together.

‘Well?’ he said quietly. ‘Is there ever aught else? Tell me... the rebels have invaded? Come, tell me the worst.’

His eyes still moved, calm, questing. The silence grew insupportable. I looked sharply at Francis Lovell who stood clenching and unclenching his hands, waxing red and white, bright-eyed.

‘Sirs,’ said the King uneasily, ‘your news, I pray you.’

Lovell stepped forward, and stumbled.

‘Sire,’ he whispered, ‘I would give every drop of blood in my heart to spare you this...’ Then, reason forsook him and he said: ‘Ah, Dickon, Dickon...’

‘Speak,’ said Richard. The word dropped like an icy pellet of rain.

‘Your son is dead,’ said Lovell.

The Queen’s first scream brought sweat gushing on my brow. She ran forward, her hair streaming like a shroud, ghostly in the tortured air, and she clawed at it, tearing out great hanks; she screamed and screamed and ran, from table to chair, from door to arras, beating and tearing at her own head while her women sought in vain to grasp her.

Norfolk and I caught the King as he fell.

At first I thought that he too would die, but he was strong and, as he said, ever inured to ill-fortune. Yet from that day I never heard him laugh, and for many weeks, when he had learned to sleep o’nights without weeping, he did not smile. With others, I nursed him, as well as I could. He lay on the borders of madness. And I was rent by his whispering voice, crying in the depths of his anguish: ‘My son, my son, my sweet son!’