A Secret Alchemy (11 page)

“I’ll tell you,” Mallorie said, and there were no longer enough flames for me to make out his expression. “The great men look too much to their own grandeur, and not to their proper business of serving God first and the King after, an anointed king too holy to understand their schemes and rivalries. They care more for gold than for the worship they ought to strive for. They must have many men about them—they must scatter their badge and pay retainers far and wide—because the men they call their enemies do so too. And so on and so on, until none may go far enough away to piss without stumbling over a so-called enemy and starting a fight.” He grinned. “As we did, excepting only the fight. Now here
we are, Palm Sunday as near as makes no difference, and whoever wins, none will have won.”

“Except those who have reached Heaven.”

He waved the sack bottle. “True. But I’d rather find a heaven on earth a few more times before then.”

“And do you? Find Heaven here?” In my thoughts flickered the golden shrine at Canterbury. For all those long months of captivity at Calais I had conjured that memory daily, calling it before my eyes as I knelt in prayer, longing for that oblivion.

“Yes—no—yes, I have found it. But not your sort of Heaven,” he said, and I wondered how he knew what Heaven was to me. “Not even on Rhodes with the Knights Hospitaller, which is the nearest I have come to crusade. Nor the sort of heaven men seek with the nearest wench.” He shook his head, as if impatient with himself. “I spoke foolishly, for I do not look to find Heaven on earth again…I have a wife, and she is well enough. But…Perhaps you heard. There was a woman I loved.”

“I had heard something.” Indeed I had, though not as he spoke of it. Sir John had said that his friend Hugh Smith brought a suit against Mallorie for the taking away of his wife.

“Of Mistress Smith? No, my friends and I only helped her to escape her husband. And he would have done nothing, left to himself, for he wished to be free of her as much as she of him. ’Tis commonly done. But he has powerful friends, whom it suited to have me accused of ravishing her away…No. It was not she.” He was silent, staring into the fire. “Love makes us what we are, as much as war, and both may lead us to Heaven.”

“You mean, it makes us better?”

“Better, and worse…Have you ever been in love?”

“No.” I did not say that I had never yet lain with a woman.

He grinned at me again and kicked a log so that the firelight brightened a little. “Are you shocked that I should compare such a thing to Heaven?”

If I were, I was not going to admit it. “I suppose a priest would say such a comparison is blasphemous.”

“Such a priest would know nothing of the matter.”

“We speak of the love of God, it’s true. We seek it,” I said slowly. “We seek it passionately, a priest most of all. We use the same words. And yet the loves of the flesh are so much less, and so often sinful.”

“Are they? Shall I ask you again when you know of what you speak?”

That he should insult me thus held me for a moment in surprise before my hand went to my dagger.

“No, Wydvil, keep your valor for the morrow. I mean only that you’ll learn in time, as we all do. There are other heavens too, you know, waking dreams of the time when all was well in the land. Sometimes when I write of them the time passes more quickly than I seem to know. In prison there’s a great need of passing the time.” He bent sideways to pick up another log, and tossed it onto the fire so that a shower of sparks rose and the flames came to life again. In the flare of light I saw that snow was falling, the flakes so small and sharp in the iron-cold air that they were like chips of ice. “You may be able to recite every page of the
Summa Theologica
, and understand it too, but most men know only Jason and Jacob and the Good Samaritan.”

“Most men have no need of more,” I said, thinking of the snoring and shivering bodies that lay round the campfires, then shivering myself.

“Perhaps not. But we have need of such men—ordinary men
and great ones—and we must tell of these things so that they understand them. Tales, that’s how it’s done. Waking dreams, set down for all to read.” Suddenly a yawn swelled in my chest so powerfully that I could not smother it. “You’ll sleep now,” he said. “Go back to your bed, and think of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot”—I rose with a stumble—“and dream of the Holy Grail.”

We had need of all our strength on the morrow to hold on to a dream of any kind of good. Hard to believe it now, with the sun beating down on my head and the horses half asleep under us as the road drops gently toward Saxton. Hard to believe that some men who lay down to sleep that night never woke to fight but had the snow for a grave cloth. Hard to believe that the wind and sleet drove so hard in our faces that we could not see the enemy, and our archers’ arrows fell short time and again. The noise was as brutal as the press of men about me: steel and flesh, and cries for the King shrieking in our ears. So close did we fight that it seemed each army barely moved, or gained on the other. It never grew fully light, but the day crawled on. Too late did we realize that where once Cock Beck had guarded our flank, now we were turned inch by inch, and pushed back to where the ground fell away, and the men with it, tumbling helplessly down to the ice-covered rocks and bloody water. It was said the waters ran red for days. Men who could walk slipped away, those who could only crawl were left for the villagers. We who were captured in hope of ransom knelt and prayed that our knighthood would earn respect, and our estate earn safety. It was certain that the cause of Lancaster was lost.

But soon we realized that, with the battle won, Edward of York had reconciliation, not vengeance, in his mind.

“Has not God shown by this victory that there can be no hope of peace while Henry with his usurper’s blood still wears the crown?” he asked my father, with a solemn face. Then he smiled. “Sire, I have lost my great Plantagenet father, and must have about me men of worship, of courage and wisdom. There’s peace and prosperity waiting for us all, had England but strong and godly government at last. You are one of the few who can give it that peace and prosperity. What say you, my lord Rivers?”

My father went to Mass and prayed for guidance, and I prayed, too, that the oath of allegiance which would secure our family would also be acceptable to God.

Edward’s smiles and jokes were as potent as charms; he recalled the name of Master This or Alderman That, and took the man’s arm and whispered small secrets that sounded great, and spoke of the strength and loyalty of the army that would guard the business of the kingdom. Richard of Gloucester was ten years younger than Edward, and he learned in his turn of Warwick to cast such charms in his own, black-eyed way, here in the north that he held so tightly for his brother. From which of those gruff merchants now going about their business behind us in York did Richard later borrow money to secure the north from Queen Marguerite and her Scottish rabble, as he no doubt named them? Which of their curtsying wives did he bed? Which did he not?

“But thus is a kingdom secured. You understand that, surely,” Edward would say when I begged him to be more discreet himself, for his own honor, even if he cared nothing for his soul. “To overcome our enemies, are we not urged to turn the other cheek?” And then he would slap the backside of the nearest page boy so hard that the wine the lad bore splashed onto the rushes, and I held my peace rather than amuse him by objecting to the blasphemy.

Perhaps it is for all those times when I bent my conscience to questionable deeds for the good of the realm that I should most beg forgiveness. If it be so, then my greatest sin was one forced upon me. My joust with the Duke of Burgundy’s natural son—the two greatest fighters of the age, fairly matched, as it was cried—was set forth with all the trappings of chivalry. There was a challenge and fair maids to carry it, a lady queen—Elysabeth—to champion, my company of knights and squires, men of mettle and worship. Later I remembered Louis as one such, though on so great an occasion I could spare little notice for anything but my own concerns. The bastard of Burgundy and I were indeed evenly matched, and were like to fight to the death before one of us found victory. Was it Louis who murmured to Edward that it might be best if matters were helped to a proper outcome? What good would it serve either realm if one of us died or earned dishonor by crying for quarter while still hale? But if it were possible to win for England by some less dreadful means, it would be politic. So, some happy accident? One that ensured my victory, without dishonoring Burgundy?

It was but a few minutes before the trumpets would sound. In our enclosure I looked over my horse, Belle Bête, and all our harness, as I have done a thousand times before and since. “On such care for small things may a man’s life rest,” my father used to say in the stables, when I grew impatient as boys will with buckles and thongs, the proper care of leather and iron. “Do not trust such care to any but yourself.” When it was time to mount, I saw that the trappings over Belle Bête’s chest hung crookedly, and the straps at his withers were differently fastened. “Who has done this?” I asked.

Louis came close, put his hand to the straps, and turned so that none could read our words. “My lord, it’s nothing. A small adjust
ment.” He spoke in his Gascon tongue. “You need have no fear. It is as His Grace the King desired.” I would rather not have looked, but it would have been dishonorable indeed to turn aside from my own responsibility, and foolish too, for if I knew not what had been done it might endanger me or my horse. Louis held my gaze, and I knew he saw my thoughts even as they ran through my mind.

Riveted to Belle Bête’s breastplate, set on his nearside and angled to catch a horse in the opposing part of the chest if they met head-on, was a sturdy steel spike.

In the same breath as I saw what had been done, Louis spoke. “Are you ready, my lord?” he said aloud, in English, and I nodded.

“It is time,” I said, and he set his hands to receive my foot that I might mount.

Burgundy’s horse was killed in the first charge. It is not a rare event, a common but unlucky chance, and almost all men spoke of it thus. There were rumors, but none believed them. Next day we fought with axes, but Edward stopped the fight after half a dozen strokes that we might end alive and equal in honor.

These things must be done. I know it to be so. There is so much in ruling a kingdom for which we must then ask forgiveness: a trespass for men’s good is still a trespass. When Ned was given into my care and I took him to Ludlow, I made sure that he understood what his father knew of how a kingdom is secured. Not his father’s way with others’ wives, for he was mercifully late in getting an eye for a wench. But day after day I taught him how to hold men to him by force as well as favor, with secret intelligence as well as great speeches, with politic acts as well as honorable ones. I could truly write to Ysa that her boy understood these things as well as he understood his Catechism, or when to make a sword-thrust in tierce and when in quarte, or how to read a counting
book and know at once if a clerk is honest. He was clever, was my Ned, like his father and like his mother too.

Now I can hear a dove, and the faint bleating of sheep, and see how the alder trees, rising above the sweet waters of the beck, shimmer in the quiet heat.

Una—Thursday

Today the walk up from New Eltham station to the Chantry
is sunny, the suburban gardens bright with well-pruned roses and bedding plants laid out by ruler. Somehow the drone of a lawnmower is as peaceful as the hum of bees in a meadow. When I reach the Chantry, the trees, which in my memory are hedges no higher than my head, hold the house and workshop in thick shadow. And when Uncle Gareth leads me into the house itself, the shadows are thicker still.

“I’m afraid so much of the good stuff has gone,” he says, “but you must take what you like of what’s left.”

I last saw the Chantry house at Aunt Elaine’s funeral, seven years ago it must be. Uncle Robert had died years before that, and she and Uncle Gareth had been living on the ground floor for a while. When we got back from the church, a handful of lodgers were in evidence around the edges of the family: earnest, pretty girls who said they were studying at the London School of Economics, and well-brought-up boys, some with paint caught in well-scrubbed fingernails, one with a packet of what I took to be cigarettes in his jacket pocket till I saw it was clarinet reeds. I remember watching Adam talking with such interest to Uncle Gareth, two craftsmen finding common ground, safe ground, real things that endured even among the mourning. Did I think much
about Mark that day? I don’t think so. I grieved for Aunt Elaine, but Adam was there, so it was all right. It was sad, and sadder still when I thought of Uncle Gareth. Still, she was a good age, as everyone said over and over again. And the end had come quickly enough, as they said too: she faded fast, over a couple of weeks, but not so fast there was no time to say good-bye. When Adam and I reached the hospital, straight from the airport, she was still conscious. She smiled at me and said Adam’s name, and her hand in mine, her cheek under my kiss, were feather-light, hardly there, nothing left but the essence of her self.

She died twelve hours later, and it was hard not to think that she’d been waiting to see me before she let go.

After the funeral, I remember, I was tired and chilled and when everyone had gone, and we’d helped Uncle Gareth clear up and made sure he was all right, Adam and I drove back to Narrow Street. He made us a huge pot of tea and I lit the fire, the salt in a rare piece of driftwood from the shingle below the window snapping and sparking blue. We pulled cushions off the sofa and piled them on the hearthrug, made toast and ate it so fresh and hot that melted butter ran down my wrist. I was licking it off when he came close and nipped the last corner of my toast out of my hand with his teeth, and ate it. I started to laugh, the cork-out-of-the-bottle kind of laugh that hurts but doesn’t stop, as much sad as happy but still laughter, in a drunken sort of way, and he caught the infection too. By the time we stopped laughing because we were kissing too hard, my ribs were aching and I lay down on the cushions. His hand went to the buttons of my black blouse and it suddenly seemed the only possible thing to do: to make love in front of the fire, the heat flowering in our bodies after so many chilly days, our touch knowing each other as friends as much as lovers, our pleasure like coming home.