We Speak No Treason Vol 2

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bestselling author both in the UK and North America, Rosemary Hawley Jarman was born in Worcester. She lived most of her time in Worcestershire at Callow End, between Worcester and Upton on Severn. She began to write for pleasure, and followed a very real and valid obsession with the character of King Richard III. With no thought of publication, she completed a novel showing the King in his true colours, away from Tudor and Shakespearian propaganda. The book was taken up almost accidentally by an agent, and within six weeks a contract for publication and four other novels was signed with HarperCollins. The first novel,
We Speak No Treason
, was awarded The Silver Quill, a prestigious Author’s Club Award, and sold out its first print run of 30,000 copies within seven days.
We Speak No Treason
was followed by
The King’s Grey Mare
,
Crown in Candlelight
and
The Courts of Illusion
. She now lives in West Wales and has recently published her first fantasy novel,
The Captain’s Witch
.

BOOK 2

THE WHITE ROSE TURNED TO BLOOD

ROSEMARY HAWLEY JARMAN

For my mother, who told me the truth

Cover Illustration: Courtesy of Getty Images

This edition first published 2006

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire,
GL
5 2
QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2012

All rights reserved

© Rosemary Hawley Jarman, 1971, 1983, 2006, 2012

The right of Rosemary Hawley Jarman, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN
978 0 7524 9187 5

MOBI ISBN
978 0 7524 9186 8

Original typesetting by The History Press

About the Author

Foreword

Part Three: The Man of Keen Sight

1469

Part Four: The Nun

Although this is a work of fiction, the principal characters therein actually existed as part of the vast and complex fifteenth-century society and had their recognized roles in history, sparsely documented though these may be.

I have therefore built around the lives of my narrators. They were all real people whose destiny was in various ways closely interwoven with that of the last Plantagenet king. I have endeavoured to adhere strictly to the date of actual occurrences, and none of the events described is beyond the realms of probability. Conversations are of necessity invented, but a proportion of King Richard’s words are his own as recorded by contemporaries.

R.H.J.

It standeth so: a deed is do

Whereof great harm shall grow;

My destiny is for to die

A shameful death, I trow.

Or else to flee, the t’one must be,

None other way I know

But to withdraw as an outlaw

And take me to my bow.

Wherefore adieu, my own heart true!

None other rede I can;

For I must to the greenwood go,

Alone, a banished man.

The Nut-Brown Maid

T
he King of England is dead, and they have taken him away, I know not where. He will have no magnificent funeral rites, no sumptuous weeping or solemn obsequies, as did his brother, whose death I also witnessed. King Edward died with tears in his eyes, begging his ministers to embrace one another, and it is only today that I fully comprehend the reason for this. For King Edward, upon whom I have thought almost with hate, bestowed a fine legacy of sorrow and confusion upon us all, and especially upon one whom I loved better than any brother. King Edward was tall and sheen, and he died in his bed. It was his lust for a fair woman that helped bring about this day of death. There was another king, a youngling, uncrowned. Bastard slips shall take no root. He did not die; not even of shame. All the fat whispers in the world cannot render the living dead. Death is brought by the axe, the cudgel, a swordthrust. Or by an arrow in the face, as died yet another king of England defending his realm, long ago.

The King is dead, and I am well-disposed to follow him, for I loved him, and never more than this week lately gone and on the day of his fall. They have shed his blood, they have used his body more shamefully than any man’s, let alone a King anointed with the Chrism. They have despoiled him of his life, his flesh, but his honour and his fame they cannot touch. This makes them angry. The wrath on their faces is like a mask hiding fear-sweat, for Death has nudged them, and the passing breeze of something greater...

Richard is gone from us, yet his name fascinates every tongue. A thorn bush received his crown, and on a humble beast his corpse was carried, yet a beast as lowly bore Our Saviour into Jerusalem. Did they not think on this? When they flung my liege lord over his poor mount?

There are a half dozen of us, knights and yeomen, a few from distant shires whose tongue I cannot understand. Close beside me, standing patiently in this foul cell, are Master William Brecher and his son Thomas. Brave warriors despite their simple stock. I fought beside them in the battle and marked the honour of young Thomas. He is afraid now, but has himself in hand. We are to be executed for our treason. Outside I can hear them erecting the gallows, with steady knocking blows, and my own heart echoes each rap. The roll has been read, the indictment signed, and in great haste, for the Dragon would be on his way to London to take up the reins of the kingdom into his long pale hands. We are traitors. And the cognizance of our treason? We fought too well in the King’s service. We bore too high the standard of Blanc Sanglier. His raison was ours.
Loyaulte me lie
.

I am shriven. For the past hour I have made my devotions. I am thirty-three years old, and I have served three reigns and seen the separate and singular manner of their ending. A fourth reign I shall not see, nor would I wish it. There is no King, save the King of Heaven, other than the third Richard. Across my knuckles I have a scar. It was not got in battle, but in friendship. Dead white, it is shaped like an arrow-head, and pricks and burns at the most unlikely moments. Looking at this talisman, my mind is full of days stretching back like a long rolling road; without seeking my saddle I can ride that road again to its beginning. I will close my ears to the hammerings that build my doom and, in love, remember Richard. Then he was Duke of Gloucester, and seventeen. Now he is but ‘the traitor Plantagenet’ and he is dead.

I shall think of the day when, for the first time, he asked: ‘Will you ride with me?’