We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (26 page)

‘Also George Duke of Clarence, and our late Sovereign, King Edward Fourth,’ he said very strongly.

‘Yea, Sir,’ I murmured. ‘You loved him well.’

He did not reply. He moved to a small ivory coffer with the Yorkist Rose studding the lid with pearls. This he unlocked. From this, searching, he lifted out parchments, rolled and bound, a few coins, the seal of his dead son, even a flower, withered and brown. Then, from the root of the coffer’s jackdaw-hoard of years he took a paper, tawny with age, but with writing plain and black. He held it, down-curling for my eyes, across the room.

‘How reads my man of keen sight?’ he asked.

It was his raison, in a boyish hand.
Loyaulte me lie
.

‘When I was sixteen years, and ill at ease as any man could be,’ he said, closing the coffer. ‘When I was pushed from place to place and severed from all that I loved, I made a choice. It was not Warwick, God assoil him, neither was it my sweet Anne. That choice was our late sovereign, my brother. The Rose of Rouen. The Sun in Splendour. One night I wrote it down, set down my heart on paper, in the midst of all my loneliness. I have never swerved, despite his marriage, despite the vicissitudes to which he laid open my life by his unwisdom.

‘Of all my loves, he was the greatest.’

He came to me, and he was smiling, a half-smile that had all of the past in it, sweetness and bitterness and despair; a smile also of resignation, and even a little ironic amusement.

‘Do you think,’ he asked quietly, ‘that I would harm the fruit of his loins?’

There were apartments at the Tower which I had never seen. There were a myriad passages and secret rooms where they could be. All the battlements in my mind crumbled before the truth in that smile, the smile of Richard.

‘The Lords Bastard are quite safe,’ he said, still smiling, ‘though I can trust none with the secret of their safety. Yet, for the friendship we once knew, and for your comfort of me this night I will say this. Seek them not in the Tower of London.’

The night was nearly spent when he said: ‘We did not finish the prayer.’ The fever had left him, though he looked weary.

Loving him utterly, I took up the
Horae
once more and read:

‘“By the blessings which Thou hast brought me, since Thou hast made me of nought and hast redeemed me, bringing me from everlasting Hell to eternal life, I beseech Thee, sweetest Lord Jesu, that Thou wilt deliver me from evil”.’

He spoke the last line with closed eyes:

‘“And after this transient life wilt lead me to Thee, O God of Life and Truth”.’

Strange, Master Brecher, that I should step from that chamber a different man, bound to the King for ever, and in my first breath, betray him.

This is the sin for which I should be hanged.

For I met a man, loitering, whom I knew as Humphrey Brereton, Lord Stanley’s esquire, and he greeted me pleasantly, saying I looked worn out.

‘Is the King sick?’ he asked, and I, cautious on Lovell’s instructions, answered, nay, he was in good fettle, and Brereton, looking closer, said:

‘He has kept you wakeful—can he not sleep?’

‘He passed a bad night,’ I said, swaying on my feet.

‘His Grace is devout, is he not? Did he pray? Leap from the bed and pray, I mean?’

Yea, I answered, King Richard left his bed most of the night, and he prayed too.

Brereton said: ‘So!’ smiling like the sun, and told me where to get velvet at a third the price, and went off with peculiar haste...

Now I can guess what was made of it. The King could not sleep, leaped from his couch as if haunted, wept and prayed... but it seemed little to me then.

’Twas a great disservice that I wrought, that day.

So little time is left to my remembrance. A prison cell, deeper than this, down through the teeming spirals of the Tower, thronged night and day with servants (where Richard, unseen by human eye, had had the Lords Bastard buried privy, that being one version of the treasonous tune sung out. That it would have necessitated the Tower being peopled only with blind men had not curbed the sting, the rot. Men will think what they will think).

I stood and heard all from the twitching white lips of William Colyngbourne, captured at last, calm with desperation, mocking like Hogan, prophesying almost, under the shadow of the Council’s wrath. Colyngbourne, of the filthy rhyme:

‘The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our Dog

Do rule all England under an Hog.’

Half London had seen it before they wrenched the crude writings from St Paul’s door. Catesby—you, who fled the bloody field—I see you now, I saw you then, so angry... you said: ‘The Speaker of the Commons to be named thus! By God’s Body, ’twill be a Cat, to hunt this vermin down.’ And Ratcliffe, sweet Ratcliffe, whom I shall see no more upon this earth... you cried aloud not at your own rude designation, but at the insult to our King. Lovell, brave dog, you did but finger the silver hound dancing at your collar, distaste writ plain, and with the greater treason worrying your mind. While Colyngbourne gobbled gruel and seemed detached from all. He had grown thinner during the fugitive months, more slithersome, with a tic that closed one eye at times.

‘The King has prisoned Turbyrville,’ he said, slopping food. ‘He will soon be free. The King mislikes to see folk long in gaol.’

He had a raw head, souvenir of someone’s anger.

‘He’ll not hang me,’ he said. ‘Not for a rhyme.’

‘Not for a rhyme on a church door,’ answered Norfolk. ‘But for your treason with our worst enemies.’

Colyngbourne dropped spoon and platter in the straw.

‘He is so
merciful
,’ he said again. ‘What proof, my lords?’

‘Eight pounds’ worth,’ said Norfolk. Holding a soiled parchment he read: ‘“To my good friend, Thomas Yate, in secret. I hereby urge you to bear our future sovereign these tidings... that the miserable usurper (whose tusks be sharp) bears no good will to France, that no French envoy is safe under his roof; that he intends war on our noble cousins of that realm... and especially to our liege to be, Henry of Richmond, that he shall make all haste to invade this autumn, when the Hog shall be from London, and my lord of Buck shall give to England a new King...”’

Colyngbourne stopped twitching, as if already dead.

‘Tom Yate,’ he said cravenly. ‘A traitor, skilled in forgery.’

‘Your seal, your hand.’

‘Lies,’ muttered Colyngbourne. Then madness took him for he tittered and smiled with long sharp teeth. He raised his cup of ale.

‘I hate Richard,’ he said. ‘Health to my master, across the sea. God save Prince Henry!’ He started to sing; he liked a rhyme, it seemed.

‘Jasper will breed for us a Dragon—

Of the fortunate blood of Brutus is he,

A Bull of Anglesey to achieve,

He is the hope of our race...’

Someone whispered: ‘Kill him,’ and behind my head there was a scuffle of restraint. They tried him when the snow lay pretty on the roof of Gildhall. Norfolk sat on King’s Bench, with Suffolk, Nottingham and Surrey, Lovell and Lisle, a commission of great dignity. They sentenced him, and no word came from Richard. Thus we knew how much he loathed the Tydder, and all he stood for. After, I saw Colyngbourne in his cell waiting on execution, and he was as one wakened roughly from sleep; he wept and pleaded before a handful of guards.

‘Let me have speech with his Grace,’ he cried. And when they turned, disgusted, from his shame, he babbled of lost rebellion, and scratched in his rat-mind for the key to lock out death.

‘I would help his Grace,’ he whined. ‘His Grace would not listen to my lord of Buckingham, yet he could have served Richard, better than any dreamed...’

‘Hold your row,’ said one of the guard.

Colyngbourne beat with the flat of his hand against damp stone.

‘He will pardon me!’ he cried. ‘My secrets are his... all that Bishop Morton planned against him...’

The guards looked at one another. Contempt rode high.

‘How they turn their coats! ’Tis the smell of the hemp.’

‘Morton was your ally, sir,’ said one.

‘Curse Morton!’ said Colyngbourne wildly. ‘He left us all, stricken, mid-march. Listen, lords! I trade you Morton’s secret for my life... I pray you, tell the King...’

‘He will not hear you,’ I said, looking at the white face, eyes like holes in snow. He clasped his manacled hands before me.

‘Hear me out,’ he whispered. ‘Bishop Morton plots against the King’s honour, and through his fame, his life... he has spread the word like plague, that Richard did murder the Lords Bastard... from shore to shore he vows that all shall know it. To turn the people’s heart against the King. To speak treason but in whispers only... he gave gold, to many, to destroy his Grace... not by the sword, but...’

Myself, a young knave in Kent, and the third voice, leaping, running alongside all my doubts. The green wheatfield, in which I had found my arrow, clean and bright, still waving in the corn. Even so did I remember young Harry, muddy, regal in his mud.

‘...to destroy your Grace, not by the sword, but by the spoken word. He talked of the Lords Bastard, but I knew not his meaning.’

So it was Morton who had put the poison in their mouths. That cunning, cunning prelate! Father of the whispers that had made my life, my King’s, a purgatory. The monk! From afar off, where run the blessed streams of righteousness—where else but Croyland, and whose diocese but that of Morton? The meaty tale with which a Cluniac had seduced two friars... a Frenchman, and Morton doubtless now lying his way through France. Red gold in the tavern. Red loathing in my eyes, misty.

‘...so that the King’s favour should be weakened, and the people learn to hate him... stories in legion, that they were smothered and cast into a pit, digged deep.’

Even the guard listened, open-mouthed.

‘Where is this pit?’ I asked stonily. Even Morton, a devil from Hell if ever one breathed, could not conjure two corpses from air.

‘It is all falseness,’ said Colyngbourne desperately. ‘Morton knew the King would take them from the Tower, once he himself was crowned. It is a place only for Kings... or traitors like me. Pray Richard to spare me.’

I marvelled at him. ‘Spare you? God have mercy on your soul.’

‘He pardoned Lady Beaufort’s man!’ he cried as I reached the door. ‘Reynold Bray goes free, treason still on his tongue! Long live the King! Beg him watch his noble person well... Spare me and I will praise him. I will say he sleeps easy, not...’

‘What? How?’ I turned.

‘Not as others instruct. That his chamberers tell in secret how he never passes a quiet night, goes about privily fenced, starting up in the dark, ghost-ridden, crying sorrow for the slaying of Ned, of Dickon...’

Humphrey Brereton, asking me with a smile, how the King slept. Here, I heard the King’s fever-grief translated into treason. The fault, mine. I knew great bitterness, and, more urgent, the voice of warning. For was not Brereton Stanley’s squire? And was not the Tydder Stanley’s stepson? Ah, Richard! You must watch Lord Stanley well.

Snow on Tower Hill, and a fierce joy in me. For the good people of London were there to see Colyngbourne drawn on a hurdle to the new gallows; folk stood muffled against the cold. The pedlars were busy.

‘Ripe apples!’

‘Is your knife sharp, butcher?’

‘Death, death, death!’ they chanted.

A woman jostled, her face wild with glee. ‘Saw you the rhyme he penned? O God! against our King! Death! Slow death!’

‘You love the King?’ I said, cold hands, cold feet, and a great warmth spreading over my heart. She grasped my arm with hurting fingers.

‘Love him!’ she cried against the tumult as Colyngbourne, bound, climbed to the scaffold. ‘Never did any do more good for me and mine! Fie! I can’t see!’ She leaped in the air, turned to an ox-fellow standing by. ‘Lift me, Jack!’ With a coarse jest, he set her on his shoulder, while an unnameable thrill, like lust, or battle-glory, started on the fringe of the crowd and ran, wind on the wheat, for they swayed and shivered and moaned softly, as the noose clipped Colyngbourne’s neck and the trestle was jerked away, so that he danced and plunged.

He began to twitch in earnest, as he had never twitched in his life. They screamed, ‘Don’t kill him!’ A terrible mercy, for there were fresh pleasures—a keen knife and a bright fire of straw burning. The butcher loosened the strangling rope, nursing the life in him like a skilful doctor, and I saw his eyes, just the whites showing. I could not pity him, for half my own soul suffered there, the worst half, that had believed the evil he had fostered. Would it have been Morton’s belly gleaming for the knife, whiter than the snow. One downward slash and his hose fell away, revealing privy parts, shameless and spouting fear. A great hush, broken by Colyngbourne’s shriek as he was castrated; the golden fire hissed when the butcher tossed the bloody members in, and shriek and hiss and crowd-roar merged for an instant. A further silence, broken by the wretch’s screams as the blade, blood-mottled, slashed down again. Colyngbourne’s belly opened like a rose and entrails purpling white and red, came bulging out. Still he lived, even under the second stroke that gashed the other way this time to make a gay crosswork of his body, for he screamed, and the crowd shook with fearful quiet mirth, afraid of the demons within them that feasted on the sight. The butcher rolled his sleeve, plunged a great fist into the mass of spewing bowels, ripped and tore. A shuddering groan escaped Colyngbourne’s lips. All around the gallows the snow was sodden red.