We Speak No Treason Vol 2 Read online

  ‘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 p
urpling 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.

  ‘O Lord Jesus, yet more trouble,’ he groaned, and his head fell back.

  How they laughed! as the living bowels died in the flame.

  He was a prophet, Colyngbourne.

  I wanted to cry aloud to those who whispered. I longed to take a woman by the hand, a woman, blonde, slender and haughty of mien, and drag her through the cheapnesses of London. I lusted to stand with her upon Paul’s Cross, roaring: ‘Here then, behold! Look well upon her! Here is Richard’s advocate!’

  Of course, I did no such thing. I only watched her, Elizabeth Woodville, mother of the Lords Bastard, still lovesome, still bejewelled, sitting at dinner with the King, and I flew to Margetta demanding, with a kind of wondering fury, why was I not told that the woman was out of Sanctuary?

  ‘Husband,’ she said meekly, ‘you were full of other things, quiet and dolorous, since your return from York’.

  I could not deny it. I had shunned even my Margetta’s presence, and naught to do with York. It was since the night in Richard’s chamber. I had bought candles for my shame... His soul burned bright on many an altar.

  ‘Tell me quickly, of the Queen.’

  ‘Anne is woefully sick,’ she said sadly.

  Impatience. ‘Nay, the false Queen Elizabeth.’

  Her frown gave way to mischief. ‘Dame Grey. Thus is she known, an honest name befitting her rank, which is no more than that of... of Katherine Bassingbourne.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘A goodwife whom Richard helped of late; he took her case of hardship before the Common Pleas. Ragged, scarce able to state her grievance—some neighbour had defrauded her. The King made a great pother and ordered restitution. I was there. Some thought it an ado over naught, but folk cheered after the hearing...’

  ‘Tell of Elizabeth.’

  The week of our departure for Nottingham, said Margetta, Dame Elizabeth Grey had come from Sanctuary, of her own free will, and bringing all her daughters. Unsolicited, she had placed them in King Richard’s hands.

  ‘Winter strikes cold in Sanctuary,’ said Margetta with a smile.

  ‘All her daughters?’

  ‘All five, to the King’s safekeeping. She wished it. He has promised them protection, good marriages for them all, that none ever mistreat them, and, on their betrothal, two hundred marks a year in perpetuity.’

  ‘Say on.’

  ‘Dorset, her son.’

  ‘Yea, traitor Dorset.’ I saw again bright eyes, strong teeth, whispered voice seducing me with gaiety. ‘What of him?’

  ‘She has written to Dorset, begging him to return. She has asked that he pledge loyalty to Richard, who will pardon him freely. My lord...’ and a line scarred her brow again, and she looked at me in a kind of sorrowful, hurting way.

  ‘What ails you?’ I asked gently.

  ‘Once, you spoke to me of things that pained you, made me weep... Dame Grey is, like me, a mother. Surely, you were wrong?’

  I strode to the window, watching the whirling snow settling pure and white upon the gable opposite.

  ‘Never more so,’ I said, so quietly that she came to me to repeat it and we stood hugged against the tooth and sight of winter.

  ‘Seven hundred marks a year,’ said my lady. ‘To Elizabeth. She’s well content.’

  Seven hundred marks is not a fortune. I stroked the smooth tail of Margetta, as I shall do no more.

  ‘And I, my love,’ I said. ‘And I.’

  Epiphany. Richard restive and sad, and the fiddles wailing their sweet, threadbare joy. A mockery of a feast; death made all counterfeit, sitting so close by Anne of the broken heart. For all the rich gowns the King bought her, and the gems with which he girdled her throat, she was his no longer, nor was she shapely and fair, but a pitiful, cough-racked shell; she was claimed already, yet he kept his hand on hers, as if to stay her going. She wore bright April-leaf velvet slashed with scarlet like the raging blood in her lungs, a dress one would have thought past copying. Yet a blowing breeze, an usher’s lusty voice:

  ‘Dame Grey, and her daughters.’

  Quiet, speculative mirth. Dame Grey was clad in black, befittingly demure in her reverence to the dais. But Bess! Elizabeth of York—she drew all eyes, her bared swelling breasts thrusting above a gown of April green with scarlet slashing. Thus came the two Elizabeths, leading a train of sisters richly dressed at the King’s expense, and young Bess’s face was transparent as a glass window. At her glowing approach, Queen Anne seemed to diminish. A ripe, swooning look lay on the bastard daughter of King Edward. Her eyes sought Richard’s: it was no way for a niece to look upon her uncle, not that pleading, hungry glance of love.

  I danced with her, a thing I should have hesitated over once, when she was a Princess. She was bold and charming, with her blue eyes ever over my shoulder.

  ‘Can you read the cards, Sir Knight?’

  Nay, madame, I cannot read the cards, and your dress mocks at my King’s dear love.

  ‘You like my gown? Her Grace had some stuff left over... Richard is fond of green.’

  How long, I wondered, had this rich wound been festering? Dancing, I spun her in a reel, felt her hard paps press me, right through my doublet’s cloth... the viols shrieked louder and Patch, her self-appointed fool, mimicked and smirked like the madman he was, feigning jealousy... Bess seized a cup of wine and drained it even while Anne’s coughing rose above the music. In almost a gay tone she said, with a French prince’s jilting behind her (for I must excuse the maid, she did but love):

  ‘Ah, God! Will the Queen never die?’

  I could not answer, and what I would have said is now past thought, for there was a tumult at the door that moment and two couriers ran in, flushed and rain-soaked. As I watched Richard rising slowly with the candlelight gleaming on his crown, with the music dying and the hot dance stilled, I knew with the foreknowledge that makes words null, that this was the tide turning. And I saw him extraordinarily changed. A sudden lightness and youthfulness fell upon him. His strong voice carried down the Hall.

  ‘News, my lords,’ he said. ‘Of Henry Tydder, calling himself Richmond, the adversary of our might. Through our spies across the sea, it is known beyond question. He gathers a force even now and plans to invade our realm.’

  A rushing tumult of cries.

  ‘When, Sire?’

  Richard leaned forward. The gleam had reached his eyes.

  ‘This coming summer,’ he said. ‘And to his cost.’

  My gaze swept them all. On one side of the room, Catesby, Ratcliffe, Norfolk, Lovell, Metcalfe, Brackenbury. On the other, Sir William Stanley, Lord Thomas Stanley; Lord Strange, his son, Lady Margaret, his wife. And Dame Grey, veiling herself for the solemn occasion. She looked at Richard too, but not, like her daughter, at his mouth, his hands or his hair. Only, unmistakably, at the Crown of England on his head.

  I am afraid. So, to sheathe my craven fear, I plunge into a chaos of thought. Memory. Disjointed. I call it back like a faithful hound. The good and the bad mingling.

  They tolled the bells one day... March it was, a month of treacherous, whispering winds, and Richard ordering the commissions of array to guard the coast towns, spending days in the Tower Armoury among the ranks of burnished steel. Richard keeping Lord Stanley waiting on audience one day while he spoke with, and rewarded, King Edward’s aged nurse, whom, he said, mankind seemed to have forgotten... they tolled the bells, and there was wailing in the Queen’s apartment, and he said, looking up: ‘What means this?’ with a fearful, fragile countenance, and Anne crying: ‘They say that I am dead!’ wit
h her hair hanging loose and wringing her hands in the cold corridor...

  They tore him from her bodily, the physicians, protocol forgotten for an instant. ‘Her sickness is mortal, mortal, your Grace, you must not enter her chamber!’

  And he, seeking comfort, turned to Bishop Rotherham with a sad and piteous look: ‘So I have lost everything. Everything.’ Rotherham’s velvet arm through his. His turncoat smile. Would he had come to me for comfort! It would have assuaged a little of my present grief.

  John of Gloucester, kneeling for his father’s kiss. John, a fine boy, God preserve him, Plantagenet nose and chin, and the grey eyes, rabbit-fur in sunlight, of Anne’s Flemish substitute. ‘We appoint our dear bastard son, John, who is both quick in wits and agile of body, Captain of Calais from this day forward...’

  Anne dying, quietly as she had lived. And no sooner was she chested and the King’s tears sealed with her under stone in Westminster, than a poisonous wave, another riot of rumour, sprang up. It came from the lips of Rotherham, he who had clave closest to the King in his sorrow. The face of Bess was made hideous to me in all its beauty, for her cruel young words came back. ‘Will the Queen never die?’ We could hear only the whispers and watch the guileless faces on the stair; we could do naught. Until there was one day a crying on Paul’s Cross, of Richard’s patience ended. And in the pleasaunce, when the daffodils had blown their trumpets ragged, I met with Bess again, smelling of gillyflowers and honey, but half-mad. I had never seen her so distraught. I could have embraced her, but I did not wish it. She wept and tore her hair

  ‘Why do they treat him thus?’ she cried. ‘The evil that men say outweighs the good.’

  ‘What do men say, lady?’

  ‘Evil, evil,’ she sobbed. ‘To say he gave her poison! Why, I hated her because he loved her so!’

  She wound both hands in the neck of her gown till the fine silk split and tore.

  ‘He is my joy and maker in this world,’ she said. ‘I am his in heart and thought. I would have him. I would bed with him and bear him the sons he never got on the sickly Neville Queen. I would give him joy, gladness...’