We Speak No Treason Vol 1 Read online

  About the Author

  Bestselling author both in the UK and North America, Rosemary Hawley Jarman was born in Worcester. She lived most of her time in Worcestershire at Callow End, between Worcester and Upton on Severn. She began to write for pleasure, and followed a very real and valid obsession with the character of King Richard III. With no thought of publication, she completed a novel showing the King in his true colours, away from Tudor and Shakespearian propaganda. The book was taken up almost accidentally by an agent, and within six weeks a contract for publication and four other novels was signed with HarperCollins. The first novel, We Speak No Treason, was awarded The Silver Quill, a prestigious Author’s Club Award, and sold out its first print run of 30,000 copies within seven days. We Speak No Treason was followed by The King’s Grey Mare, Crown in Candlelight and The Courts of Illusion. She now lives in West Wales and has recently published her first fantasy novel, The Captain’s Witch.

  BOOK 1

  THE FLOWERING OF THE ROSE

  ROSEMARY

  HAWLEY JARMAN

  For my mother, who told me the truth

  Cover Illustration:

  Reverie, by kind permission of the artist, Graham Turner

  This edition first published 2006

  The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehistorypress.co.uk

  This ebook edition first published in 2012

  All rights reserved

  © Rosemary Hawley Jarman, 1971, 1983, 2006, 2012

  The right of Rosemary Hawley Jarman, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9185 1

  MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 9184 4

  Original typesetting by The History Press

  Contents

  About the Author

  Foreword

  Part One: The Maiden

  1464

  Part Two: The Fool

  1471

  Foreword

  Although this is a work of fiction, the principal characters therein actually existed as part of the vast and complex fifteenth-century society and had their recognized roles in history, sparsely documented though these may be.

  I have therefore built around the lives of my narrators. They were all real people whose destiny was in various ways closely interwoven with that of the last Plantagenet king. I have endeavoured to adhere strictly to the date of actual occurrences, and none of the events described is beyond the realms of probability. Conversations are of necessity invented, but a proportion of King Richard’s words are his own as recorded by contemporaries.

  R.H.J.

  Gloucester:

  You may partake of anything we say;

  We speak no treason, man; we say the King

  Is wise and virtuous...

  Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, Sc. I

  Part One

  The Maiden

  The maidens came

  When I was in my mother’s bower;

  I had all that I would.

  The bailey beareth the bell away;

  The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

  The silver is white, red is the gold;

  The robes, they lay in fold.

  The bailey beareth the lull away;

  The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

  And thro’ the glass window shines the sun.

  How should I love, and I so young?

  The bailey beareth the lull away;

  The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

  XVth Century: Anon.

  Gardening is all of my pleasure. It was ever more a joy than a duty, to watch the tender shoots burst forth in spring, and to know that I had a part of them, in the cold season. When the scent of rose and gillyflower rises to mingle with the pungent breath of thyme and rosemary, chervil, basil and rue, I can close my eyes for a sinful instant, and be young again. Not old, and witless, and shattered by rheumatism like an oak after the lightning; but brimming with promise, as a fresh field awaiting the sower’s careful hand. Like the good earth of England, made rich by the blood of strong men, slumbering in moist quietness yet, beneath, a moil of passionate life. Like my garden. I call it mine, but in secret; for nuns have no possessions, only their thoughts, and should the bishop and priest have power to read my mind, they might find me exceedingly worldly still. And I do not care. Sorrow is a sharper blade than penitence, and when a creature is bared to the bone she sees life as one might through a slanted glass, some of it faded, some of it out of true, some sharp and clear. I am very old. They say the old remember childhood best of all, and they do not lie, though this is a world of liars.

  I have been thinking today about Elizabeth. Dame Elizabeth Grey, who was our Queen. I knew well that Elizabeth. I lived in her house, on the manor of Grafton Regis, when I was young, and reckoned myself so full of guile and cunning, and know now that I was not. Another Elizabeth is our Queen, and they say that she is ailing. May Our Lady of Sorrows have mercy upon her and guide her where I long to be. Though I have never seen her, I know that she is fair, like her mother; her mother of the herb garden. That brings me again to the flowers, and the neat rows of spices and the weeds which spread even unto the cloister with its tomb. Gardening too has its moments of truth, for a grave needs to be weeded, like everything else, and this is the grave of my beloved.

  They buried him here, for there was nowhere else for them to lay him, in spite of the fact that he should have been entombed at Westminster, not only for the good he wrought but because he came of the old royal line. No ordinary man was he; neither knight nor squire nor honest yeoman, but one possessed of such extraordinary strength and compassion that you would think he would ever be loved and revered. Mine is a strange, barren story: more joy, more sorrow, than is the lot of most. Yet the sorrow is sometimes almost forgotten and the joy, which supported me through the years while he lived, was such to make me smile and dream, refusing the knights who would have married me, and being content with the memory of a few hours. It is no heresy to love, and be mad. And there are times when, hearing the things now shouted about him whom I knew to be a good man, I wonder myself if I were once bewitched by the bright fiends of Fotheringhay.

  I say the sorrow is almost forgotten, yet days come when an old woman has to look anxiously for the comforting Eye of God, in the mote of a sunbeam, in the passing glint of a chantry window, all the while cursing her frail tools and her weak hands. And I have betrayed my secret, an open secret these days, and one which I could mouth with pride. Yet had he been the lowest of the commonalty I would have run gladly towards the love we loved together. Daily the shouts of calumny and disfavour reach my ears; the shouts that once were whispers. I can but smile and shake my head for, being what they deem a witless old nun, my testimony is useless.

  Always was he all my joy. And I first heard his name at the manor of Grafton Regis, when I was twelve years old.

  A king once loved me.

  1464

  Two little boys played naked under an April sun. I leaned from the upper window, laughing at them. Tom, the elder, who was taller by a hair than Dick, had set up the
quintain for lance-practice. It was a fearful Saracen’s head, carved from wood and painted, and balanced so that the lightest thrust would send it spinning, arms opened wide to fell the jouster. Adding to the hazard was a bucket of water placed atop the Saracen. As I looked, little Dick, raising his weapon to shoulder height, made a charge untimely and unskilled. The infidel swung round. I heard a thud, saw the sparkling cascade then, howling, Dick sprawled on the sodden lawn, while his brother roared in triumph.

  ‘They’ll catch a chill.’ Behind me came the grumbling voice of their nurse. ‘Lord, Lord, what will their mother say?’

  Say? Why, she will say naught, I thought to myself. She is too preoccupied these fair spring days. But I merely smiled at the nurse. I kept this secret as I kept my admiration for the absent Dame Elizabeth, for she was beautiful, my mistress. Tall and gilt-haired, with a small pouting mouth and heavy, mysterious eyes. I knew that, uncaring, she would let her boys run bare beneath the grudging sun, when they should be at their lessons. I imagined she had much on her mind.

  So I said: ‘They are hardy,’ and went on watching them.

  ‘Tchah!’ said their nurse.

  ‘Lady Grey approves of their sport,’ I murmured. ‘She says it will harden them for battle.’

  And she had gone out riding, this day. Riding in Whittlebury Forest, where once she had met the man; the man with hair like the sun, and a body like a slim oak tree. I often wished that I were fair as Dame Elizabeth.

  ‘Battle!’ said the nurse.

  ‘’Twill be a long time yet,’ I said comfortingly.

  ‘Will it, in truth?’ she answered crossly. ‘I’m not so sure.’ Her wrinkled eye was upon me and I searched my mind for a task undone, a duty neglected. I had been beaten once already that day; thus was I standing to watch Dick and Thomas Grey from the window. I could not sit down easily.

  ‘From what I just heard,’ she went on, ‘babes and sucklings ride to battle.’

  I was dying to know what the courier had said. From the moment of watching him ride through the crumbling courtyard an hour ago, I had been a-boil of curiosity. It was unusual enough, even in these days of fretful peace, to have such a messenger visit Grafton Regis. A real royal courier, with the rose en soleil shimmering on his surcote. There were so many things I was hot to know. He might even be able to tell the name of my lady’s handsome stranger, the sun-haired knight. So I laid my cheek against the nurse’s sleeve, fawningly.

  ‘What said he, sweet dame?’

  ‘He talked of the King’s brothers,’ she said grudgingly. ‘One of them leads the levies to join the royal army. Like a real captain, and he only twelve years old. They are encamped at Leicester.’

  Ah, Leicester. This gave me a pang. For it was at Leicester that I had been reared, in a nunnery, under the most virtuous Prioress that ever drew breath. Through war and peace and changing monarchs, in riches and penury, Leicester had been my home, both physical and spiritual. There I had lived with my mother until her death, and there had my father, dying, willed me to Grafton Regis and the service of Sir Richard Woodville’s widowed daughter, Dame Elizabeth Grey.

  ‘To my mind, it’s shameful,’ said the nurse, looking dolefully at the drenched boys. ‘Nowadays, knaves are men before they’re out of swaddling bands. Look at those two! And as for little Gloucester, I doubt he’ll stand the journey.’

  I knew hazily of King Edward’s two brothers; there was George of Clarence, and this other, younger one, whom few had seen, who led an army, and who was of scant interest to me.

  ‘Why did he not send my lord of Clarence instead?’ I said. ‘If this Gloucester is so young and weak besides...’

  ‘George was appointed no commissions, the courier told me,’ she replied. ‘And the King thought it would be good for Richard. To give him confidence, courage.’

  I dismissed this with a yawn. Then, eagerly, longingly, asked:

  ‘Did the man... did he know aught of my lady’s leman? The most handsome man, the hottest in love, for that he must be. Did he...’

  Without warning, she boxed my ear. The wide sleeves of her worsted flew about.

  ‘Leman! Lover!’ she growled wrathfully. ‘Cease this shameful talk! Remember always, there’s none more chaste than Lady Grey!’

  Had I been older, I might have mistrusted this fire-hot defence of virtue, and been wrong, for all that. Had I not witnessed a certain scene with my own eyes, I might have wondered on it. But, enthralled, scarcely comprehending, and a little afraid, I had seen the evidence of Dame Grey’s incorruptible virtue. What I saw occurred not long after her first meeting with the great golden knight; a meeting which, in itself, had seemed a strange, oddly predestined thing. Elizabeth had gone out into Whittlebury one day, on foot, and unescorted save for the two little boys—and very sweet they looked, if a little ill-nourished and pale—hanging on her either hand. We had feared for her; the royal hunt was reputed to be about, and there was the hazard of her being trampled in the chase. Yet she returned at dusk, smiling, softly flushed, no harm having come to her save that the horse of a young nobleman had splashed her with some mire. It was soon after this that this man, terrifyingly handsome, like a saint or a sungod, had begun to visit Grafton Regis. I did not know his name, though I strongly suspected that others in the household did. He often called himself ‘Ned’—sometimes ‘poor Ned’—this with a rich laugh—or ‘lovelorn Ned’ in songs he composed himself and accompanied on the lute. My awe of him was great. For one thing he was so tall his golden head seemed to graze the clouds. That he came to Grafton at all was a kind of miracle; so might a saint step down from heaven, or the sun itself swing low for a brief space to bless our days. Young and sturdy, he had a happy voice and a purseful of gold angels ready to drop at any small favour done him. Once, he pinched my cheek. I blushed and shrank; he called me ‘hinny’. Then, Lady Grey entered—he forgot me and grew pale with longing.

  And my days were filled with pleasant duty, brushing out Elizabeth’s long hair of spun silver, bathing and perfuming that white body. It grieved her that she had but a handful of dresses in which to receive her splendid guest, so that I was forever refurbishing them, taking the tassels from one, the gold passement from another, to make of a third a thing of beauty. We were poor at Grafton. Poor by any standards, for Sir John Grey, while he lived, had fought for Lancaster, and most of his estates had been forfeit to the Crown. I think this saddened Elizabeth; she had a passing tragic look at times, enhanced by the widow’s barbe and wimple custom bade her wear. All her lovely hair was hidden, save for one little lovelock, a gilded promise that surmounted the broad brow, full lips and pointed chin. Lovesome was she, while she laughed gracefully and drank wine with the fair nobleman, she kept about her a cloak of chaste piety which might, I thought, have chilled his ardour. It did not; he was mad for her, as rams are mad in spring.

  I rubbed my smarting ear and thought of the day I went to the herb garden on an errand for Elizabeth’s mother. The old Duchess of Bedford, who lived with us at Grafton, kept her own small knot garden behind the long yew hedge next to the stables. A clipped, neat sward of lawn lay between beds which themselves were filled with strange plants and stranger fungi, most of whose names I did not know. Once, Jacquetta of Bedford had been as fair as her daughter, and now she spent hours brewing skin salves, or potions to revive her thinning hair. On this occasion she had sent me only for a few sprigs of rosemary and some cherry-blossom, should it be flowering yet. So I went down and the rich borders welcomed me with a joyous waft of perfume, so intense and inviting that my latest worry, the need of a new gown, fled from my mind, and I lay down, stretched out along the edge of the flowerbed, hidden by the bushes, watching a beetle staggering through the grasses, breathing thyme and sweet gale and pennyroyal, thoughtless and content. So their voices startled me, when Lady Grey and her tall young suitor came slowly down the lawn between the rectangles of raised shrubs. His velvet cap was tucked beneath one arm. With the bright light circling his head, he lo
oked like the spirit of the sun. Yet he seemed ill-pleased about something, and a petulant smile lay on his mouth. Elizabeth’s eyes were demurely downcast; as she walked she plucked a flower-head, a primrose growing in moss halfway up the garden wall. She held it for an instant to her lips. Instantly he snatched it from her, quite roughly, thrusting it deep into the breast of his doublet as one might plunge a sword into the heart. He took her hand. Their footsteps slowed. They stopped a few paces from where I lay; I dared not move or make a sound.

  ‘Lady, be kind,’ I heard him say. Then, desperately:

  ‘Sweet Bess, why do you torment me so? I pray you, be kind. ’Tis little to you, and the whole world to me.’

  She murmured something, low as her downcast eyes. She began to walk on, but he sprang, clasping her in his arms. She made no move to evade him; she merely stood, smiling that same, faint smile, and looking at the ground.

  ‘Flesh and blood, Madame?’ he asked gratingly. ‘Or stone, Madame?’ Then it was I became uneasy, frightened. He was so changed, so fierce. With a sharp movement of his great hands he tore the wimple from Elizabeth’s head. Her silvery hair spilled over his arms. Bending, he crushed his face into her throat, while she stood, motionless. I gripped a bunch of rosemary and prayed they would not see me. Lying there, afraid, I thought I heard the pounding of their hearts.

  ‘Yield to me Elizabeth!’ he said in a terrible voice.

  I could not hear her reply, it was so soft. Sunlight stabbed at the blade of a drawn dagger, and jewels burned at its hilt. He was holding the knife to her throat, the white throat bruised by kisses.

  ‘Yield, Madame,’ he said, like a madman. ‘Or, by God’s Blessed Lady, none other shall possess you. Bess, Bess,’ he said, like a child, ‘would you have me insane?’

  Standing bravely, she said, calm and pleasant: ‘Sir, I am too good to be your leman. Too good, Ned, to lie, even with you, in sin.’