The Tintern Treasure (3 page)

The landlord began to bluster, but before he could threaten us with eviction, the door into the ale-room opened and the new arrival appeared.

I knew him at once, although it took him a minute or two to recognize me. He was a Bristol lawyer by the name of Heathersett, an elderly bachelor who lived with his mother and had chambers in an alleyway that ran between two of the Broad Street houses, curving to the right and emerging into Wine Street, near the castle. Whatever its original name – probably Crooked or, perhaps, Elbow Lane – it was known generally as Runnymede Court on account of the fact that there were at least three men of law practicing there.

‘Lawyer Heathersett,' I said, rising respectfully to my feet and nudging the Yorkshireman to do the same. ‘What's this story, sir, of rebellion in the south?'

He peered at me short-sightedly with his protuberant, pale blue eyes, then fiddled in his pouch, finally producing a pair of spectacles which he perched precariously on the bridge of his nose.

‘Do you know me, my man?' He stared harder, then suddenly added, ‘Ah! Yes! It's Roger the chapman, isn't it? Forgive me for not knowing you at once, Master Chapman. My eyes are not what they were.'

Oliver Tockney and the landlord turned to stare at me. The latter looked thoroughly taken aback. ‘You're acquainted with this man, Your Honour?' he asked dubiously.

The lawyer nodded vigorously. ‘Oh, yes. Most certainly. He's very well known in Bristol, where we come from. Quite one of our more famous citizens.' His tone was dry and, I thought, a little mocking, but to my relief, he didn't elaborate.

Curiosity was written in every line of the landlord's face, but all he said was, ‘I'm just about to get Your Honour's supper. Indeed, my goodwife's already preparing it. But . . . But if you'd be obliging enough to tell us what you know . . . how these rumours of rebellion came about . . . where you heard them . . . if they're true or not . . .'

‘Yes, yes.' Lawyer Heathersett drew nearer the fire, spreading his delicate, almost transparent hands to the flames, his thinning grey hair still damp from the storm and plastered to his skull. A thought struck him. ‘Is my horse being properly cared for?' he enquired anxiously.

‘As if he were my own,' the landlord reassured him. A jerk of his head indicated that Oliver Tockney should vacate his stool, and promptly. Our host had patently become nervous of me, unsure of my status. A pedlar who was hailed almost as an equal by a lawyer was outside of his experience.

Master Heathersett – his Christian name was Geoffrey, I suddenly recalled – took the proffered seat and shivered as yet another squall of wind and rain hit the shutters and the candles once more guttered in the draught.

‘The first rumours reached Bristol before I left home, last Thursday. Who brought them I've no idea, but the town is always full of strangers, as you know, Master Chapman. I think the first I heard was on the Monday and, to begin with, I discounted it all as malicious gossip. Up until then, everyone had spoken well – more than well, if the truth be told – of King Richard, and it seemed universally acknowledged that Parliament's offer of the crown to him had been a very good thing. But as the week wore on, other and more convincing details reached us. Many of the late king's friends and loyal supporters in the south and west had risen on behalf of his son and were determined to restore the boy to his throne. There was a story that an attempt had been made to rescue him and his brother, the little Duke of York, from the Tower. By the time I left Bristol for Hereford early Thursday morning, the rumours were gaining credence everywhere, and when I reached Gloucester, proclamations against the rebels confirmed their truth.'

The lawyer paused as his supper was borne triumphantly into the ale-room by the goodwife, who had produced a fricassee of chicken and mushrooms in very short order and was expecting to be congratulated on her efforts.

Nothing but silence greeted her, however, and she unloaded her tray, setting a place for one on the table with an offended sniff. There was also a certain amount of thumping and spilled ale as she placed another full jug and a fresh beaker alongside the dish of fricassee. Then the door banged behind her and we heard her muttering angrily to herself as she retreated to the kitchen. The landlord raised his eyebrows at my fellow pedlar and myself – a look which plainly said,
Women!
– but which went unnoticed by the lawyer as he drew his stool to the table and set about his supper with a will.

I gave up my stool to the landlord, dragged forward a bench from beside the opposite wall and shared it with Oliver Tockney. We allowed Master Heathersett to take the edge off his hunger before continuing to question him.

I got in first. ‘You were saying, sir, that proclamations against the rebels were being issued at Gloucester, in which case there can be no doubt that these rumours are true and that there has been a rising in the south and west in favour of the lord Edward. Do you have any idea of what is happening elsewhere?'

The lawyer made no answer, his mouth being full, rendering it impossible for him to reply immediately. But Oliver Tockney said, ‘If the news has reached York, King Richard will be on his way south to confront the rebels. He may in any case have already started on his return journey to London.'

And not before time, I thought to myself. The king had, in my estimation, lingered far too long in his beloved Yorkshire. It would not endear him to his subjects in the south, whose suspicions of anyone living north of The Wash were ineradicably inbred.

With a determined effort, Lawyer Heathersett cleared his mouth, waving his spoon about in an agitated manner as he did so. When he was at last able to speak, he said excitedly, ‘But that's not all! I haven't told you everything yet.' He took a gulp of ale and continued, ‘I'm here on business with a fellow lawyer. Here, in Hereford. He, himself, has only just returned from Wales and he says that the Welsh are also up in arms on behalf of Henry Tudor . . .'

‘Henry Tudor!' I broke in scornfully. ‘No one's going to rebel in favour of Henry Tudor! He hasn't a shred of entitlement to the throne!'

Geoffrey Heathersett's judicial instincts asserted themselves. ‘Indeed, he has,' he argued with asperity, ‘on both the spear and distaff side.'

‘Both bastard lines,' I contested hotly. ‘Neither the Beauforts nor the Tudors have a legal claim to the throne.'

The lawyer shrugged. ‘That won't stop the disaffected backing them. Henry Tudor is the last scion of the House of Lancaster, and the Lancastrians, as you know, have never accepted the Yorkist claim to be the legitimate heirs of Richard II. Besides' – he gestured once more with his spoon, flicking bits of fricassee in all directions and his voice rising almost to a squeak – ‘according to my friend, there's another, much more serious rumour gaining ground in Wales.' He drew a deep breath and lowered his voice to its normal level. ‘And that is that the two boys, the two princes, have been murdered in the Tower on the orders of the king.'

There was an aghast silence. The landlord sat as though turned to stone while Oliver Tockney and I looked at one another in total and utter disbelief.

‘What a fucking great lie!' Oliver roared, so loudly that the lawyer jumped and spilled gravy down his tunic.

At the same moment, I pounded the table and demanded, ‘Surely you don't believe such vicious nonsense, do you?'

I was remembering some words of King Richard's, spoken to me back in the summer. ‘You have saved the life of a young boy, a very precious thing.' Moreover, I knew the man – had known him, on and off, for the past twelve years – and I would swear to his probity and honour. He was deeply religious, but even if he weren't, he would never order the death of any child, let alone his own nephews. And in any case, why would he need to? Parliament had accepted his right and title to the crown. He had been consecrated king in Westminster Abbey.

I felt confident that the rebellion would come to nothing. King Richard had been a seasoned soldier since the age of eleven. He was perfectly capable of putting down any revolt against him. The story of the murders would then be disproved. The lie had been concocted by someone or other for his or her own ends. But who that person was and what those ends were was not yet clear.

And they were still not clear when I finally climbed the inn stairs to bed. The intervening two hours had been spent in fruitless discussion of the news with Master Heathersett and Oliver Tockney – the landlord had been called away by his irate wife to deal with some emergency, either real or imagined – but I was perfectly satisfied in my own mind that the rumour was false and would soon be quashed by the king's public denial.

In spite of this conviction, however, I found it hard to fall asleep, and for this, my unruly thoughts were as much, if not more, to blame than the storm still raging outside. (There would be some loose tiles and missing thatch come daybreak.) The news of the uprisings had disturbed me and, for a while, I stubbornly refused to acknowledge the cause. Instead, I feigned astonishment that a king so universally acclaimed – from all I could gather – wherever he had been received on his royal progress, whose coronation had been among the best attended for a hundred years or more, whose acceptance of the throne, in place of his twelve-year-old nephew, had been hailed with apparent relief by everyone of note, could so soon be facing rebellion. But in the end, I forced myself to face the truth.

The fact was that by no means had everybody been happy with the change of sovereign. There were many people who remained dubious about the legitimacy of King Richard's claim. Even I, with the knowledge gleaned from my journey to Paris the previous year, was uneasy. Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, had sworn that he had betrothed the late King Edward to the Lady Eleanor Butler well before the former's wedding to Elizabeth Woodville, and there seemed no reason to doubt his word. In the eyes of the Church, the bishop had maintained, a betrothal was as good as a marriage. Maybe it was, but it should have had the endorsement of a papal court before declaring King Edward V and his siblings bastards. Besides, I had heard it argued, if the children of everyone who broke off a betrothal to marry elsewhere were declared illegitimate, half the population would be bastardized.

Then there was the uncomfortable fact of the young Earl of Warwick, who came before King Richard in the line of succession, but who was barred from the throne by the fact of his father's attainder. But an Act of Attainder was easily reversed, and considering King Richard had always stoutly declared that George of Clarence's execution had been entirely due to the machinations of the Woodvilles, why did he not choose to right this apparent wrong? The answer to that, unfortunately, was all too obvious . . .

Here, I abruptly got out of bed to use the chamber pot. As I relieved myself, I could see clearly where my thoughts were leading me. After all these months, I was forcing myself to accept what, deep down, I had felt all along: that I was not entirely convinced by the validity of Richard's right to be king. And what was more, as I climbed back into bed, I perceived with a sudden, startling clarity that he might not be entirely convinced, himself.

And with this thought in mind, I fell asleep and slept uneasily until morning.

With the coming of daylight, I suppressed the whole idea as nonsense. Of course, King Richard was rightfully king and I was one of his most loyal subjects. Moreover, as I cautiously opened the shutters and looked out on a wet and bedraggled world, the reason for the rumour about the deaths of the princes struck me with the force of a sledgehammer. If the Welsh were rising on behalf of Henry Tudor, what better way to get the dissident Yorkist supporters on their side than to persuade people that Richard had villainously had his nephews murdered? I trusted that the king would be swift to deny it.

Here, a knock on the door heralded a chambermaid with a jug of hot water for me to wash and shave. I also cleaned my teeth with my customary piece of willow bark, fished out of my pack my one spare shirt which I had resisted putting on until now, having noticed at supper last night that I was beginning to smell, and descended to the ale-room where Oliver Tockney was awaiting me.

‘Has Lawyer Heathersett gone?'

It was the landlord who answered as he bustled in with a tray of hot oatcakes and small beer. ‘He's a busy man. He has several days' business yet to complete in the town. He'll be back tonight, but you two will be gone by then, I daresay. You'll be wanting to be on your way. And now the weather's improving a little, trade's bound to pick up again.'

The Yorkshireman grinned at me and winked. ‘I might stay around for a day or so and try selling some o' my wares in this town. What about you, Master Chapman?'

‘A good idea, Master Tockney,' I concurred.

‘Then you must both find other accommodation,' the landlord declared, finally showing his hand.

We didn't hurry our breakfast and by the time we finally left the inn, the weather had improved yet again. What clouds there were, shuttling busily across the face of a watery sun, were thin and transparent, like gossamer. It seemed at last as though the gods were smiling and that the terrible storm had blown itself out.

So Oliver Tockney and I spent a couple of days touting our packs around the town, making sure that we didn't tread – literally – on one another's toes, and doing a surprising amount of business among the goodwives of Hereford who had been housebound for too long by the inclement weather and were in urgent need of spending a little money. And for the hours of darkness, which were growing longer with each passing day, we found an ale-house tucked away in Bye Street, where we were offered a couple of verminous blankets and the use of the ale-room floor when the locals had departed. Both Oliver and I suspected that it was something of a thieves' den, but we didn't let that worry us. We were strangers and it was none of our business.