A Secret Alchemy (19 page)

I catch Anderson’s eye. “I would go aside to say the Office.”

He looks at me for a moment. “Aye, my lord, very well.”

The spinney crowns the crest of an outcrop of rock and I walk toward the far edge. Here sunlight lies warm on stones, dead branches, and rough grass. Beyond the rocky edge, and far below, a stream threads like tarnished silver through sour brown and green marshland. Behind me, I feel a movement and another. They are wondering if I will leap to freedom.

I will not. A body broken by such folly would be no freedom, and to seek my end by such a design would be a mortal sin. Nor would it save Ned, or help Louis if he is still at liberty. All I have left is God.

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…

I commend Ned and his kingship to God. I pray for Elysabeth,
and for my two wives—one living, one dead—and for my daughter and her mother. And for Louis. Then I commend these loves, too, to God, and empty my mind of all, that it may fill with the peace and grace that God gives.

After uncounted time, I feel the sun on my hands and smell the peaty air. My mind’s eye returns to this world. The men sit and stand at their ease, finishing their food. One goes aside to shit, another picks at his teeth. Better that I should fast, for by denying the body sustenance the spirit is freed and the power of prayer is the greater. But the day and the ride before me are yet long: to be weak with hunger would be foolish. To which necessity should I yield?

I walk back toward the men.

“With respect, my lord, I must ask you to eat,” says Anderson. “We have some way yet to ride.”

I nod. He snaps his fingers at one of the men. “Robin, meat for his lordship.”

Robin gets to his feet and fetches meat, bread, and a bottle of ale from one of the saddlebags. I sit on a log, and he goes back to where he sat at the foot of a tree, and throws himself down as easily as a lad passing a hot afternoon on a riverbank. He is young, his skin reddened by the sun where his jerkin stops, and his reddish hair falling away from his brow as he leans back on his elbows. It is a long time since I have looked at a man and wanted him. It is only some trick of sun and heartsickness. I have never lain with any man, except Louis.

That I should think of such matters at such a time is strange and sinful, for my mind should be fixed on God, not on the loves of the body. But I do not love only Louis’s body. It is his mind that I love most, from the day we met again by chance after many years.
And now, sitting on the rough grass with my captors waiting for me to finish my meat that we may take the road again, I know that I have had no other earthly love like Louis’s: not his for me, or mine for him. And now I never shall.

Perhaps I have this slow, hot ride to my death to thank for such knowing. These empty miles are a pilgrimage, a prayer; a journey void of all else but the simple knowledge of my end. And into the void God has poured this strange grace: that I may know again such love. If it is true that Louis’s love for me and mine for him is but a tithe of a tithe of God’s love for the meanest mortal, then how can I fear my end, when it will bring me at last to such unimaginable joy?

I finish eating, rise, and nod to Anderson. I am ready to ride on.

Antony—Nones

When I remember that year of exile, it is for both hunger
and riches.

We had marched to Yorkshire to oppose the Lancastrian rebels. Then word reached us that the troops that were coming to reinforce us had changed their coats and declared instead for Henry. Another messenger knelt before Edward and panted that they marched hither still, but to arrest us. Young Richard of Gloucester in his boyhood valor cried that we should fight the rebels to the last man standing. His brother knew better. Many of our men had already slipped away, and Edward gave us leave to dismiss the rest back to their farms and mills, without striking so much as a blow for their king. As the men scattered, we turned away and fled through the night.

We felt our way round Gainsborough in the deepest dark, and when a hungry dawn came, we saw first the towers of Lincoln Ca
thedral, appearing against the sky like ghosts. We skirted Lincoln too, and as the dark lifted we saw how the country had changed from the green Yorkshire meadows we had left for Warwick to take unhindered. Here, dank black fields stretched to the horizon, flat as a table and seamed with innumerable ditches, mist hanging over them as if the floods were but that day retreated. Every few hundred yards a drain was cut across the road, and more than once a tired horse stumbled over one and was cursed for carelessness. We were tired too, but could not rest: even a handful of men could be seen for miles in this empty land. We did halt once, to buy bread and meat from a farmhouse, and to rest the horses in such cover as we could find. Once in the mist we caught sight of a troop of mounted men, riding, it seemed, toward us. I thought of my own brother John and my father, trapped the year before by Warwick as they fled, and murdered on his orders without trial. At least they were shriven, and would be saved for God’s justice, though denied that of the world. Then the men disappeared into the mist, and we breathed again.

The prayers for my father’s soul are the same as those which I must hope for now.

We slept in a copse of pines, wrapped in cloaks and holding our horses, while the clinging damp of the mist collected on the needle-leaves above our heads and fell in heavy drops to startle us awake. At Boston, on the morrow, we looked toward the Wash and saw at once by the patched and salty mere before us that the tide was out. We must hasten to find a guide to take us across.

“May we not wait till the next low tide?” asked Hastings. “Our horses are all but dead under us and ourselves little better.”

“That were past midnight, sir,” said the harbormaster, shaking his head. “You set out then, and you might as well say your prayers and ride into the quicksand and be done with the world. But so
long as you’re off in the next hour, you’ll do. I’ll get you a guide, and you get yourselves fresh horses.”

For all Edward clapped the horse chandler on the shoulder and smiled at his wife, we were told we must pay more for the horses, for the risk of the journey and the difficulty of getting them back. Nor could we quarrel with the price, because we could not hide our urgency. But at last we were mounted, and the guide with us. He was a small, dark man with a low brow and few words.

“Do you know what they say of the Fenmen?” said Richard of Gloucester, sidling his horse up to mine. “That they have webbed feet, the better to live in this marsh of theirs. Shall we make him take off his boots and show us?”

Webbed feet or no, our guide led us out across the bay at a canter, sometimes veering to avoid a deep channel but sometimes against all seeming sense making for the water and away from mud and sand. A chill, salt wind dragged at our cloaks and in the deeper water the spray reached our breeches till they clung coldly. Little was said, and we rode at our guide’s command, in a body at speed where it was safe, and spreading out to pick our way when the ground began to quiver under the horses’ feet. They hated it, as horses always hate uncertain ground, stepping reluctantly, balking, and tossing their heads at each rivulet and green-smeared stretch of mud. We were weary; keeping strange horses together and moving on took patience and strength that none but Edward seemed still to have. He even coaxed a smile from our guide with a jest about the big sea birds and little waders that dipped and stalked about on the sand. The glow in the gray sky that was all we could see of the sun began to shift downwards, silvering the sedge and marsh grasses at the sands’ rim, and casting faint, shape-changing shadows across the ground we crossed.

Suddenly a great, shrieking flock of gulls arose with a clamor of wings from the reeds to the landward side of us. Hastings’s horse shied, spun, and bolted. Mine gathered itself to follow, and I saw Edward’s leap forward too. Then with a jab of his spurs Richard of Gloucester got himself across the King’s path. The King’s horse faltered, veered, and I grabbed its bridle. Once we had the King safe we looked round and saw that by the Lord’s mercy Hastings’s horse had made for solid ground, not the quicksands that to us looked no different. At last he wrenched its head round and returned to us at an untidy canter. We were shaken and short of breath, and sat still for a space to recover.

“Dear Lord,” the guide shouted, pointing toward the open sea. “That tide’s too quick. Hurry!” He clapped his heels to his cob, and our horses, already nervous, needed no spurs to set off after him. Like a wild herd we thundered indifferently through mud and sand, looking to and fro between the treacherous ground ahead and the thin line of gray foam that slipped toward us, silent and inexorable, faster than we could ride.

By the time we sighted Lynn, the waters were up to the horses’ knees, and deepening by the second so that they struggled against it.

“Well, gentlemen,” shouted Edward, “if we drown, we may find King John’s jewels on the way down, and then our troubles will be over.”

I saw Richard’s mouth tighten with impatience and he jerked his head away as if the sight of his brother laughing made him angry. Hastings reached and brushed Richard’s arm. “The King knows well enough what danger we stand in, sir, but danger brings out the best in him, and the best is the courage that makes him laugh at it. Do not think him foolish. He has a better understanding than any of us.”

Richard nodded, and the waters fell away from us as the ground rose, and we gained the dry sands and saw the sturdy towers and roofs of Lynn standing at the mouth of the Ouse. If all was well—if my good cousin Haute was indeed at home, and had a ship to lend us—we were almost safe.

In Burgundy our hunger was not for food, for we were welcomed most kindly by the Duke’s governor in Bruges and housed in the kind of luxury that no other land I know can so well supply. Rather our hunger was for peace of mind, and for riches that were not ours. Not a week went by that Edward did not send messages to his brother George of Clarence, coaxing or commanding that he might return his allegiance to his brother. He sent, too, to the enemies of Warwick, and most often of all to the Duke of Burgundy’s court, publicly or secretly, to ask if the Duke was yet willing to receive us. Since the Duke’s chief enmity was to his overlord the French King, we hoped he would open his arms to us. We were, after all, the enemies of France too, since France was a friend to Henry of Lancaster. But we heard nothing. The Duchess Margaret sent letters privily to her brother, but could not go openly against her new lord in this.

Meanwhile we lived in Bruges while the gray Netherlandish winter crept over us, with little to do but drink, dice, and haunt the alchemists’ workshops. We spent what money we could spare on furs from the Baltic, ivories from Africa, and books, but it was not much, for the riches that were about us cost gold we did not have, except when kind friends and shrewd London merchants sent letters of credit to the Flemish merchants that we might borrow on their security.

The news that Elysabeth had been brought to bed of a son in Westminster Sanctuary, and a sturdy child like to survive at that,
came to us when we were in exile at Bruges. It was a heavy, gray day with sleet blowing in from the polders, and as always we were waiting for a reply from the Duke of Burgundy that we might lay more plans to win back the throne. The tedium of such days could rot the spirit: I was wrapped in a blanket by the fire, translating Ptolemy; Hastings was writing a letter to his man of affairs with one hand, and with the other throwing dice with young Richard of Gloucester. Edward, despairing of hearing anything from His Grace that day, had sent for his latest woman and taken her to bed. I remember that Hastings ran upstairs to his bedchamber and hammered on the door, as only he might, in right of their friendship and his office of King’s chamberlain. The roar of joy from within lifted our hearts.

“And you, my friend and my brother,” said Edward to me that evening, waving his wine-cup as if he would embrace the world, “I shall appoint you my boy Edward’s governor. Who could be more fit for such a great task than his uncle? You shall have the teaching of him, in book-learning and at arms, and thanks to your knighthood my heir shall be the greatest prince in Christendom.”

Our hopes were strengthened, though there was greater fear, too, for Elysabeth with a son was in even greater danger than before. Still we waited, and fretted, and idled away the days in Bruges. My chief joy was the books. Oh, the books! The clerks and scribes could work in three or four tongues, each glossy black letter a step, each graceful word a figure in the dance across the vellum, line after line, page after page. Then the limners would weave lapis and scarlet and gold about them, and draw the figures: saints and kings, Jason, Iseut, and Melusina, plowmen and laundrywomen, a curly-coated terrier, a bunch of grapes squeezed into a gilt-and-ivory cup, King Solomon’s castle shimmering in
the sun, the ram caught in a thicket to reprieve Isaac. One of the Merchant Venturers had a press for copying script with metal type, like that in Strasburg, though the pages it made could not compete for beauty with scriveners’ and limners’ work. From the best scrivener in Bruges I bought an exquisite miniature copy of the
Summa Theologica
, and had it on the tavern table beside me when a dark young man, seeing me unable to resist opening its casket and stroking the sweet new leather of the binding, asked me what book it was that I read.

He was Louis de Bretaylles, come to Bruges to offer his services to Edward, for he was a man accustomed to work in secret between old allegiances and new. When he reminded me of it, I remembered him at the joust, though not a word further was spoken of that day. Why had I not seen him then as I saw him now? But then I was so newly the King’s brother-in-law and the Queen’s champion, I had not thought to look among my entourage for friendship. We were both older now, and wiser in telling the turns of Fortune’s wheel, secrets and all.

But soon our talk turned to poetry and philosophy: he knew Christina of Pisa, and Chaucer, Aquinas, and Livy. His eyes were black and his hands long-fingered, and his voice had the tang of one born speaking the langue d’oc, though he spoke the langue d’oeil well enough, English and Spanish too. And when he laughed at me that my face was still so pale-skinned, for all my years’ campaigning, and began to quote Chrétien de Troyes from
The Story of the Grail
—“
Ainc mai chevalier ne conui
…”—I wanted to reach across the tavern board and seize him by his thin, hard shoulders, the better to kiss him long into the night. And I did kiss him so, and many nights thereafter.

My love for Louis was almost more than my soul and mind
and body could bear. Sometimes I would rise in the moonlight and watch his sleeping face, his copper-colored skin and whip-cord arms, and wonder that I did not die, there, in that breath, for the love of him.

At last the Duke decided to receive Edward, and lent his support to our great enterprise. As before, I was to have the hiring and commissioning of even this tiny royal fleet. I feared that Louis and I would be parted, but he cleaved to me as I did to him. When I asked him to come to England in my train, though no longer as my squire, for he was made knight himself by that time, he knelt to me and bowed his head in assent. In public he played his part perfectly, as he did so many others, though some about Edward knew him from the past. But no man knew what Louis and I were to each other beyond comrades in arms. It was only in our private love and care that our allegiance was equal.

When we sailed from Flushing to regain Edward’s crown, we knew that the enterprise was as risky as any we had known. Our strength was small: His Grace of Burgundy would not spare more men or gold than what was needed to show his enemies and his wife that he espoused Edward’s cause. When we sighted the Norfolk coast, we sighted Warwick’s ships too. Lynn was armed and readied, to defend itself and capture us, and perforce we went about and headed north.

Louis was standing in the bows, watching the dark stains that the storms ahead were casting across the face of the waters.

I touched his shoulder, and he turned his head. “Love,” I said quietly, “I would give you this, before we give our lives into Fortune’s keeping.”

I put the calfskin bag into his palm, and he pulled the cord loose. It is a signet in the form of a ring: I bespoke it of the best
goldsmith in Antwerp before we left the Low Countries. Heavy gold it is, engraved with the pilgrim’s shell of Compostela, for he has made the journey twice to seek grace at the shrine of Saint James. On the inner face of the ring, touching his skin, is carved our private signal: Jason and his ship, threading through the clashing rocks.

He smiled and slipped it onto his finger, then embraced me as men do on the eve of battle.

“À Dieu, mon amour,”
he murmured, for my ear alone.
“Nous nous rencontrions au ciel.”

Now, after so many years, his words are fulfilled: it is indeed in Heaven, God willing, that we will meet again, and I pray God, too, that I may endure Purgatory with patience, knowing that Louis will join me there.

The afternoon light is dull and hot about us. It is not the riding that quenches all light within me and weighs my spirits with lead. I have ridden such a distance in a day many times, and we are not far now from Pontefract, the end of all these journeys. But now I must accept what I have refused to know: that no help will come. Perhaps I was foolish to half-hope that it might. But the chance, if ever there was one, is gone.