We Speak No Treason Vol 2 Read online

  She shook her head. She looked a little dazed.

  ‘He seems a fair man,’ was all that she could say. And ever, the roll read to the juries who tried cases in the Court of Common Pleas:

  ‘We charge you straitly to defend all our commons against oppressors and extortioners, to dispense justice without fear or favour, in mercy and fairness to all men, guarding against bribery and corruption. Justice for each man, be he humble or great. We charge you directly to follow our will in this.’

  And all the time my treacherous heart beat out the rhythm of my pain. Where are the sons of Edward? Where? Where?

  A cloud born of the news of the Tydder crept across the sun, word of a fresh invasion, of which King Richard disdained to speak in his correspondence with Brittany, as if deeming the Pretender of scant importance. Yet he was wary. Soon after the final sitting of his Parliament we took horse for Nottingham. That gloomy rock, that impenetrable fortress. At its feet, the town sprawled, straggling; all around for many leagues the flat counties, bristling black forest, lay under our surveillance. Here, the King’s hand rested upon the heart of the Midlands; a dozen couriers stood ready. Here, he could watch and wait, as he and I had once done together, young knaves, coaxing the nervous hours with chess. I was closer to him then. I asked him many questions and got fair answer, that other time at Nottingham. You shall ask a Duke but not a King. Had kingship changed him so utterly, or was it my own dread méfiance?

  March yielded to April on our ride. A soft April of beauty, of stark branches suddenly clothed in tender green, and, new-washed by the drifting rain, each tight bud at last abandoned to flutter and show against the sun’s gleam; then a fast-flying oyster sky, then sun again. The calling throstle and robin dropped beads of song like jewels; in every tree there was a cuckoo, bold and full-throated and mocking, Gentle tips of green encroached upon the road. It grew hotter. On one side there was beauty, a field palled with gold and white, buttercup and dog’s-eye; on the other, merriment, as a rabbit washed behind its ears, saluting our splendour from a moss-green dais.

  The Queen was sad, none the less. Gently, springshowerly sad. Her escort hung back and I took his place, on my sorrel, old now but still prancing the merry season out under her hoofs. Anne smiled at me.

  ‘It will be beautiful, northward, now, your Grace.’

  ‘The beck will be in spate,’ she said, bowing her head. I cursed my tongue. We were not riding that far north. Not to Middleham, and Edward of Middleham, who made all things green.

  ‘How does the Prince of Wales?’

  Before she could answer, there was a scudding of hoofs and black regal looks from the Earl of Northumberland, come with tidings of the rebels still free, who had espoused Buckingham’s cause and roamed the country. The Crown Lieutenant read of the latest captures: Turbyrville, and Colyngbourne had been sighted. Twitching, sparse-spoken William had a price on his head. Last Tuesday forenoon he had been pursued and lost in London.

  ‘What news of France?’ asked the King.

  ‘Divided, and squabbling, since Louis’s passing.’

  ‘A minority rule moves people thus,’ said Francis Lovell. He rode close to Richard, making him laugh, touching his sleeve, pointing to a soaring lark and sending up his peregrine halfway to heaven in swift victory.

  ‘So perish your Grace’s enemies,’ he remarked, as the two birds clashed mid-sky. Sir William Catesby and Richard Ratcliffe jogged at the King’s side. They talked of the Parliament.

  ‘Justice for all,’ said Ratcliffe soberly. ‘How they extolled your Grace! And the statute of bail—why, they cried for Richard an ’twere Coeur de Lion returned!’

  ‘It was but their due,’ said Richard, and his face beneath the black velvet bonnet with its pearl brooch became a little more set. So Lovell cut in with a quip, peering forward to see his sovereign’s thoughtful smile. He loved him deeply, that was plain, as did Ratcliffe—and there was near-worship on John Kendall’s face. Had they heard the whispers? I mused; could they feel and do thus, if they had? They were none of them dissemblers—they were heartily pleased with the new Parliament and clung close to their King. Northumberland thought differently. With all his unhampered governance of the North, the Parliament gave him no joy. I had learned this through my need for a flagon of ale on a fierce March day, a fortnight earlier.

  In the Mermaid, the booths are built like prayer-stalls, dark, high-backed. So it was only Northumberland’s voice, buzzing to my ear through four-inch oak, that told me of his presence. Neither had he seen me enter, from Friday Street. He had companions with him, two familiar voices and one to which I could not fit a face. They spoke of the King’s new statutes, with the incautiousness born of anger. Disgust rode high in Northumberland’s voice.

  ‘And at Oxford, because there was a man, a common peasant, who tattled of some poxy deed, said he’d been misused...’

  ‘Dog should have been whipped,’ said Sir William Stanley.

  ‘Misused, because he could not read the law!’ pursued Northumberland. ‘Thus, old Dick’—this contemptuously—‘turns the world about—commands the statutes writ in English! Jesu, now every snivelling dunghill whelp shall know himself a lettered man—like you, or I.’

  ‘The swine love him for’t.’

  ‘Yea. Perchance he would compose his Council of poor clerks and alewives!’

  ‘’Tis what he deserves, certes,’ said the voice unknown.

  ‘Push not so hot.’ (Thomas Stanley’s voice.) ‘Kneel to the King. Always.’

  ‘I had no other thoughts,’ said Northumberland mildly. Someone laughed. There was brief silence.

  Then: ‘For how would you raise your levies now?’ A fist boomed on the table.

  ‘The evils of livery and maintenance!’ came Northumberland’s voice, cold with anger. ‘When he spoke out thus against it—Sweet Christ, I had ado to hold my tongue!’

  Yea, Richard had forbidden this practice of binding oneself to a lesser lord and, fleetingly, I saw myself riding beneath Dorset’s standard. Yea, my lords, thought I, how will you raise your murderers now? Then, that righteous glow died in me, for to murder a murderer is surely just. God, where are the sons of Edward?

  ‘Yea, but how would you?’ persisted that quiet, unidentifiable voice.

  ‘By loyalty, the King says,’ and there was a general burst of mirth.

  ‘You look princely yourself, today,’ said the younger Stanley.

  ‘God be praised, I am well-purveyed,’ answered Northumberland. Then, fiercer: ‘Long may I continue... know you he has halved the Crown dues on no less than eighteen cities?’

  ‘Soft, sir,’ said Lord Stanley unexpectedly. ‘I... I fear him.’

  Caxton had entered then, bearing the Order of Chivalry, its words moist. He had promised it for Sir Robert Brackenbury, but could not resist showing it to a few friends. I glimpsed the dedication: ‘Long life to King Richard, prosperous welfare and victory over all his foes.’ Carton smiled, bearded, gentle and with that pungent whiff of ink that clung to all his gowns, more sumptuous now than in days past.

  ‘His Grace came to see me at work yesterday,’ he said proudly. ‘We talked of the old time in Flanders. I had forgot most, but not he; how I showed him the Jason tapestry and the Palace of Wonder at Hesdin. A little, stern knave he was. “York will triumph,” he would say, staring me in the eye. “My brother will give us the victory.” ’Tis years ago. Then, I did trade in clothing...’ he tapped the book tenderly, blew invisible dust from its cover, ‘not this.’

  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 h
im.’

  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.