We Speak No Treason Vol 2 Read online

  His first anguished cry tore my slumber apart. Seeking wildly his presence by my side, I found him gone. The fire was almost out, but in the corner of the room a small blue flame, lit by him, illumined the statue of St George; a youthful relic, gleaming tranquilly for all that a King lay prone beneath it. With spinning head I left the couch, hearing against that dreadful sound. One word, muffled, yet stark with meaning.

  ‘Peccavi!’

  I went on tiptoe, miserable, unsure, and knelt, close to one of his outflung hands. He clutched a heavy silver crucifix; I tried to pray, but when I heard once more: ‘Peccavi!’ I thought only: Aye, lord, you have sinned, in truth; then next: he will be chilled again and the fault mine—so I lightly laid my hand on his, and all but drew back from its heat.

  If he had been cold before, an inferno now raged in his blood and I was sore afraid, for so had King Edward seethed before the dying. Thus it was that I knew I loved Richard, despite all, and it was passing hard to witness his privy sorrow, for a crime that had robbed him of all hope of Heaven. So I kept my hand on his and in a quivering silence said: ‘Peace, my dear lord.’ And he rose up from his face and, kneeling, looked at me, and when he said, ‘You are a good man,’ I felt an aching in my heart and was glad my thoughts were hid from him. He gazed again at the little flame and the George, who guards pure knighthood, and said, deeply:

  ‘May God forgive me! For sending him to the block!’

  In that moment I did not understand. He began to talk swiftly, in the way he had, half to himself, but with the tincture of anguish in each syllable.

  ‘I! who once talked of forgiveness—of Our Lord forgiving seventy-fold... I! who could not forgive!’

  He swung round and caught my arm; he was mindless and fever-hot. All rapid grief, his voice hammered my ears.

  ‘Perchance... well... well... aye, ’twas because I loved him so dear I could not have borne him near me afterward, knowing of his treachery... Morton and Stanley... sometimes I wonder about Stanley... they did not cut so deep! Yea, his was the bitterest betrayal of all. Sweet Christ, how I regret that day! Ah, Hastings, who led us northward once to find a King! Ah, William, William!’

  He beat his breast, weeping. Sweat ran down his face.

  ‘Verily, I was loath to lose him,’ he said.

  I spoke not one word. I had seen the King’s guilt, like a bare bleeding wound. And it was Hastings that he repined—Hastings, grown man and traitor, who had courted death and deserved it. I saw Richard Plantagenet, sick with penitence in the dark hours. For Hastings, justly slain, like the traitor Beaufort, the traitor Buckingham. And with never a thought to his true victims... two little knaves, lying somewhere deep, all unassoiled...

  Men said the Princes were no more. They told it in the taverns, and holy men, washed by the blessed streams of righteousness, saddened folk with the story. Even the shadows shrieked it.

  Yet Richard, wanton-tongued with grief and fever, repented Hastings only.

  I milled the hellebore fresh root, milled it extra fine, while he sat limp and sweating like a blood horse that has been pushed too hard. I bent eye and ear upon the handmill so as not to look at him, or to hear the murmured words that poured from him still. He was bound on self-castigation; the evil humours boiling in his body had touched his brain, undamming a stream of guilt. My thoughts were dreadful thoughts. I milled faster. The smell of the root, mouldy and sharp at the same time, rose up. Hellebore, for mania, melancholia. I laid the powder on a crust and took it to him, looking down at his feet, at his calves rubbed raw from saddle-hours, anywhere but at his face. I tried to be deaf, while he raved, quietly, of Hastings, of past sins, little sins of the flesh, of impatience and passion... he would make me his confessor and I longed to fly the room, for soon I thought he would speak of the worst thing of all... I offered him the medicine, with lowered head.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked sadly.

  ‘A simple to cure your grief, Sire. A plant of easement.’ Then, shaking, I told him what the herb-maid had said.

  ‘Ah God, yea,’ he said, taking the crust from me. ‘The river that flows from Paradise! Give me of it, then, my friend. Give me aught of Paradise. It seems I have lost mine.’

  He would make me his confessor, and I could not bear it. He would speak of the Princes, crying of how, in a moment of temptation, the Devil got him by the soul—the details of how they died, and why. Why? Why, deposed Kings had been killed before my time. Men said it.

  He would make me share his burden, and I was not strong enough.

  ‘Eat, Sire.’

  He looked at the bread, then at my face. My eyes flew away quickly.

  ‘You think only of my comfort,’ he said softly. ‘Am I worthy?’ I felt my hot blood rising. ‘Your Grace!’ But feeble words could not hold back his thought.

  ‘There was none other,’ he said desperately. ‘A bastard cannot rule. Ah, holy God! Did I do right to wear the Crown?’

  ‘Sire. Hush and hush, I implore you,’ I muttered. For he opened his heart, as no King should do before one such as I; opened all, like the besieged gates of a famished city. And my thoughts were dreadful beyond knowing. For he did not speak of the Princes, the Lords Bastard, and a growing fear stole over me, clouding my eyes—a dread I dared not name but one which rose up and shaped itself from whispers, screaming skulls, bogies in the dark night; whispers, bloated and fat and obscene, pursuing Truth down a long hill into the valley where dead men lay... a dread of my own thoughts, my own past beliefs. I did not see him rise from his chair. Suddenly he was by the hearth, nudging the cold grey ashes with one foot. The log he touched crumbled apart, fell to powder, cold and dead.

  ‘So burns away a dynasty,’ he said softly. ‘So lies my only son. Next year, I would have buckled the Garter about his knee... now... all finished. Saw you the Queen today? My Anne’—his face contorted—’will bear me no more children.’

  Now, my mind craved his confession. I would fain have him talk of the Lords Bastard... how they were done to death, a matter of privy policy. He had been judged. It was enough. Let him unburden himself to me and have it marked down after as mere sick ravings... let him take away the dreadful doubt, the doubt I could not own.

  The knowledge that my sight had failed me, that I had listened where I should have looked—that I had given credence to foul lies... I felt faint suddenly. He had his hand upon my shoulder, and he was talking yet.

  ‘All my hopes,’ he said. ‘Gone, like a dream. England would have smiled under my son’s hand... would to God he had been strong and hearty, like my dear bastard John! Shall the name Plantagenet be thus swept away for ever? Our rich, royal line... how shall we be remembered?’

  The pressure of his hand grew, bowing me at his feet.

  ‘I have endeavoured to show favour and mercy. I have tried to do what is right. For England. Yet...’

  He ceased. The tabor of my heart went drumming. I kept my eyes upon the King’s bare feet. There was wood-ash on the toes.

  ‘Yet there are those who speak great treason against me,’ he said, very quietly.

  Three pains had I. One behind each eye, a deep burning soreness where a swelling river ran, and another, across the knuckles of my hand, at which I looked to see an old scar, talisman of faith, upsurging as if newly branded.

  His voice came to me through a cloud.

  ‘Always, you brought me comfort,’ he was saying. ‘This night, you gave me your good warmth. You cooled my blood with herbs. Now, I pray you, ease my spirit.’

  It came with difficulty, ‘How, your Grace?’

  His hand crossed my vision, pointing. ‘Take up the Book of Hours, and read.’

  I lit candles. I took the Horae from a chest, undid its clasps. I opened at the first page, a Collect of St Ninian, scrolled at the beginning of each line.

  ‘Turn to the end,’ he said almost inaudibly. It was a prayer, plain, black and unembellished. Someone had borne very heavily on the page when writing.

  ‘“Most me
rciful Lord Jesu Christ, very God, who wast sent into the world by the Almighty Father to loose our bonds, to lead Thy flock back to the fold, to minister to contrite hearts, to comfort the sad, the mourning and the bereaved, deliver us from affliction, temptation, sorrow, sickness and distress of mind or estate, and from all perils in which we stand.”

  No penance I could do would ever be great enough. If the whispers, lying, had snared me in their filthy web... ten thousand candles would not burn my shame away.

  ‘“Stretch out Thine arm, show Thy grace to us, and free us from the sorrows which we endure. Even as Thou didst free Abraham from the Chaldees, and Isaac from the sacrifice; Jacob from the hands of his brother Esau, Joseph from the hands of his brethren. Noah in the ark from the waters of the Deluge, Lot from the City of Sodom, and Thy servants Moses and Aaron, with the children of Israel, from the hand of Pharaoh and the bondage of Egypt...”’

  He knew this prayer by heart; I could hear him echoing my voice in a breath. I read as never before, giving each fair round phrase its proper emphasis, breathing comfort into every word.

  ‘“Saul on the Mount of Gilboa; David the King from the power of Saul and Goliath the giant. Even as...”’

  The script merged, blurred. Had I been prepared, I might have managed it, but even that I doubt.

  ‘“Even as... even as...”’

  A cry was choking in my throat. My power of sight was gone. There was only silence, mine and his.

  ‘“Even as Thou didst save Susannah from false accusation,”’ he said, in his beautiful voice.

  Knave and fool, I stood, while the leaves of the Horae trembled and fell together. Just before the trumpet sounds, and the graves are opened, the silence will be as that silence.

  ‘Read on,’ he said, gently.

  I could not read, neither could I see. I, of the keen sight.

  ‘Why do you not look at your King?’ he asked.

  My blood answered him, by rushing in redness over my neck and face. Then, I heard him laugh, a truly awful sound.

  ‘You too?’ he said, passing soft. ‘You too have searched your heart in prayer and found me guilty?’

  The floor was hard under my knees.

  ‘Yea,’ said Richard. ‘Men speak treason against me. Need I repeat you what they say?’

  He began to pace about, talking the while, a quiet, hard tirade that swelled and faded as he turned.

  ‘They say that I have destroyed Ned and Dickon—to what end God only knows. Once, you spoke to me of hatred and I answered that I knew it not. Ah God! now I feel that my soul is indeed endangered by that passion...’ He stopped, both talking and walking, and I prayed that he had done, but he went on, his voice like a leaden maul on steel.

  ‘They also murmur,’ he said raspingly, ‘that Our Blessed Lord sent retribution when He took my son, laid low my wife... do I, then, know your heart?’

  I looked up. The gathering shadows seemed to suck him into their midst. He was King Richard once more, not the sick young man I had held in my arms. A distant clock struck, thrice, and on the third note’s death I said, whispering:

  ‘I can brook no evil thoughts against your Grace.’

  He laughed, a bitter sound. ‘Because I am your liege lord? How short, then, is the memory of mankind. Certes, I feel sometimes I have the longest memory of all.’

  He beckoned me from my knees, and came near. The candle of his eye was very large, perchance from the medicine. He was all eyes, dark, shining.

  ‘Cast back your mind,’ he said. ‘We were brothers in exile, at Bruges.’

  I managed to speak, steadily enough.

  ‘I remember well,’ I said. ‘When you held my hand in fire and asked my allegiance.’

  ‘Which you betrayed,’ he said, sword-swift.

  ‘All unwittingly and to my own sorrow since, Sire,’ I answered. ‘I have said my culpa many times, since Stoney Stratford. I would thrust my head, not my hand, in fire now, to your service. It was my folly that I trusted Sir Anthony... he spoke so fair and King Edward had an oath, while dying...’ He cut me short, placing his fingers on my lips.

  ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘’Tis past. O Lord! the mistrust that treachery has bred in me! Tell me, is there any loyalty? Any love? Any kindness left? Any gratitude?’

  ‘You are exceedingly well beloved, your Grace,’ I whispered, my keen sight gone swimming in a mill-stream of tears. His fingers rested on my arm, with a kind heaviness.

  ‘You have known all my loves,’ he said. ‘My people, my wretched, oppressed poor. My Englishmen, proud and warlike and true. Even John’s mother...’ he pinched my arm with a little forced jocularity, Dickon Broome again! ‘Ah, she was fair.’

  And we were quiet, remembering.

  ‘Recount the rest,’ he said suddenly, and, glad to spare him their tender names, I muttered: ‘The most noble Queen Anne Neville, God strengthen her... Edward, Prince of Wales, whom Our Lady keep ever...’

  ‘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 Brere
ton, 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.