We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (16 page)

The seneschal stood in the doorway.

‘His Grace bids you enter.’

But there was one coming out who impeded our passage. An artisan, small, rat-like. He clutched to his breast a roll of parchment, the wax on it new. From his patched garments rose the reek of back-street London. His pale face gleamed up at me. As he passed, Buckingham’s knights recoiled a little with crimping noses.

‘Fourteen years,’ he said in a small rusty voice. ‘Fourteen years have I waited for this title. None would ever listen before. They said I had neither case, nor hope of such. Jesu preserve that man.’ He went suddenly red. ‘That—that sun of York.’

Then we were standing beneath the fine hammerbeam roof of the council chamber. The sun of York sat at the board. John Kendall, his secretary, sprinkled sand upon the last of his writings for that day. Richard was in pleasant humour, while Buckingham fairly sparkled. Again, approaching the dais, I was struck by his likeness to Clarence. Ruthless and gold and gallant; even the way he tossed the cup’s contents down his throat, with one showman’s gulp, was token of Clarence, who had drowned in wine.

‘Will my lord join me?’ smiled Buckingham.

‘Later, Harry, later,’ said Richard, handing a bundle of bills to Chancellor Russell. ‘I shall need your advice on the distribution of these enfeoffments. For the King’s signet,’ he added to John Kendall, rolling yet another parchment. ‘Harry’—he rose, linking arms with Buckingham—the Spanish have a proverb: “The man drinks the first cup, the second cup drinks the first, and the third drinks the man.” Very well—’ at Buckingham’s laugh of protest. ‘Pleasure yourself, good friend. We have laboured long today.’

Then he saw us, aligned before him. The smile left him and was reborn on Buckingham’s face.

‘My lord, these friends of ours have something to impart,’ Buckingham said smoothly. ‘I fancy they have flushed out the rats which made those rustlings lately in the realm. With your permission, sir,’ and he stepped forward and twitched from my hand the letters I carried, letters to Jane Shore of blackest reason, letters from her lover, and letters from the Queen Dowager. He thrust them towards the Protector, who remained motionless.

‘I do beseech you, read them, cousin,’ he said. ‘My eyes are sore...‘ The last words retreated into silence.

‘By God’s Body,’ said Buckingham, with a little whistling noise. ‘Rats indeed, my lord—but these are greater rats than you or I had dreamed. Treason, my lord. Treason writ large. Will you hear the rats’ names, my lord?’

He was enjoying it. The Protector’s lips grew thin, with blank despair at the foreknowledge of those names; yet George of Clarence was cruel too, men said, and had called the childish Gloucester ‘changeling’. So Buckingham smiled as he read the words:

‘Rotherham, my lord.’

‘Yea,’ Richard said, without expression. ‘He was chagrined because I took away his high office. That, for his wild and wanton action with the Queen. He gave into her hands the Great Seal. I was justified.’

Buckingham gave him, a queer, swift look. ‘None doubt it, sir,’ he said. ‘Shall I go on?’ His brows shot up as he read:

‘Morton, Bishop of Ely! Certes, how the cloth of Holy Church is rent this day!’

Richard was beginning to look calmer. ‘A cunning prelate, as our young king said. Is there more?’

‘Stanley,’ Buckingham said with bitterness. ‘Despite his great estates bestowed by your sovereign brother, my lord. The shame. Ingrate. He should be punished duly...’

This time Richard laughed, a hoarse, unlovely sound.

‘Stanley goes where the wind of change blows him,’ he said. ‘Loyalty was never one of his virtues. Yet...’ he hesitated, and his stern face looked almost bewildered. ‘I fancied that he loved me well enough.’ He poured wine before the page could read his wish, his hand shaking like a tortured bird.

‘So, Harry. And who was captain of this conspiracy? Which of these three foolish lords prized his head the least?’

This, then, was Buckingham, the magician, producing the bauble from the air. The serpent in lieu of a fish.

‘Another that loved you well, my lord,’ he said softly. ‘So well that he now plans your death, the seizing of the infant king, the plunder of the royal bounty. Love so great for you that he is now handfasted with Elizabeth, the Woodville Queen, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey and the harlot Shore! Verily was he fast with her, my lord. He lay with her last night, and loved you well. My lord...’

‘Nay,’ said Richard, turning his back on Buckingham. ‘Not Hastings. Before God, spare me this.’

He was spilling the wine, and it dripped down his doublet like dark blood. Buckingham lowered the parchment.

‘It is all here, my lord,’ he said softly. ‘We should thank Christ for the swift sagacity of our agents...’ A purse, corpse-cold, weighed my palm. I let it slide, watching the Protector’s stooping back. He was resting his hands upon the table, his head low. One of the marks fell and rolled, tinkling. Then there was only silence, which Buckingham broke with a tossing laugh. He stepped forward to grip the Protector’s shoulder, the one which was a little malformed from axe-work.

‘Cousin, my lord,’ he said, ‘we were to die, you and I. Our lives cut off, and England left to the mercy of the greedy Woodville tribe. As to Hastings—he loved you once, mayhap. Now, no more. Denounce him.’

‘He was the loyalest of them all,’ said Richard.

‘Cousin, our lives are in peril!’ said Buckingham urgently. ‘Tomorrow night would see us in our blood!’

There was another beside Richard now, one with a gentle face.

‘Your life is mine, Dickon.’

I had not even noticed Anne Neville’s presence. She sat so quietly in her corner of the big window, with her tapestry, her little hound. A frail, small woman, she came into this conflict of battling knights.

‘Arrest him, my lord.’ This, from Francis Lovell.

‘The traitor!’ John Howard’s fierce growl.

The Protector turned. He looked sick.

‘So be it,’ he said, very quietly. ‘Summon these four lords to a Council meeting. At ten in the morning. Friday, June thirteenth. A luckless day.’

And he drank his wine, and sat down again, heavily, and I felt Ratcliffe nip my sleeve, for he knew Richard well, and we withdrew, leaving the Protector to Buckingham’s bright ministry. Later I prayed to the small blue Virgin above my bed. I prayed for the courage that I knew he never lacked. I prayed that he would have the strength to brook the severance of a good right arm. And I said all the missed Aves I should have given him, and asked his health and comfort in the long years ahead. Long years ahead! O Jesu! Even then, it was 1483, and the shadows just beginning to gather.

Were I to live unto an old man, I would remember always that morning in the White Tower. The lords entered with a stiff rustle. Richard stood to greet them, aloof and sword-straight, still but for the unquiet fingers which turned the ring upon his right hand. The Bishops took their chairs each side of the board. Morton looked very splendid that day, in his ermine cloak. He talked of strawberries; he had a fine crop in his Holborn garden—would my lords care for a mess of them?

I think they foreknew, Hastings particularly. He sat motionless, while the others coughed and shifted and, in the following hush, looked expectantly at the Protector, and Buckingham, behind his chair. So Richard began to speak, with a cold, queer controlled passion, and I shrank from his voice, for there was grief in it that rang harder on the ear than any shout of rage. And I was anxious lest the four conspirators should hear it too, and, construing this as cowardice, defy him outwardly. But then I heard him declare before the Council how the plots had been discovered, and at the one word ‘Treason!’ a buzzing struck up, which swept through the room and hid among the arras, and the June sun departed suddenly so that the place grew cool. And when Richard spoke of Rivers, Grey and Vaughan, I was glad to hear the virtue of his wrath.

‘
These Woodvilles have paralysed my arm
. I can do naught for England and its sovereign lord. Their treacherous plottings cripple my endeavour. They have despoiled the realm, they have worked most evilly to render the Protectorship null and void. And further, they have schemed against my life!’

The buzzing became a stormy silence. Then Richard Plantagenet was on his feet, leaning over the table.

‘My life means little. What the treasonous knaves have not thought on is this!’ Drawing his knife, he drove it hard into the board, where it sprang and quivered.

‘If I should die this day, as was intended, twenty thousand men of York would rise to avenge me! Is this what they hoped? Yet another bath of blood for England? A dagger in England’s heart?’

His hand pointed.

‘I accuse you, William, Lord Hastings, of plotting with the harlot Shore, with the Queen Dowager and her kin. Hastings, I accuse’—and for a terrible moment I thought he was about to weep, and my hand flew to my swordhilt, for I knew they awaited weakness like kites round a raw head—’I accuse you of high treason,’ he said, and turned his fierce blue eyes upon the blanching company.

‘And you, Thomas Rotherham, likewise. And you, John Morton, of connivance with the Woodville brood. And you, Thomas, Lord Stanley, for conspiracy against the King and his government. Traitors all!’

‘Thus are you named,’ Buckingham said grimly.

I had never feared Richard more. I watched those craven faces register this confrontation in their singular ways. Rotherham felt gingerly for his weapon, got it half out of the scabbard, and saw it struck from his hand by John Howard’s blade. And then suddenly Stanley fell on his knees before the Protector, mouthing pleas as if he were an actor playing the scene rehearsed for many hours. Morton turned aside, masking the quiver at his jaw with a lean, stroking hand.

But Hastings stood firm, and looked deeply at the Protector.

‘Richard,’ he said.

‘Treason, my lord?’

‘Richard, Richard, your Grace,’ Hastings said again. ‘For Edward’s sake—for the Sun in Splendour. Have you forgotten the glory?’

The Protector wheeled to face him.

‘Yea, by Christ’s Passion,’ he said, through his teeth. ‘The glory you destroyed! You, and the strumpet Shore! Night after night, cup after cup! Leading him in wantonness, making of him a sot, a drunkard. Speak not to me of his glory! I was made sick by the sights I saw at Sheen, at Greenwich...’

‘Richard,’ said Hastings desperately. ‘For all that is gone, I beseech you...’

‘For all that is gone!’ said Richard, with hissing breath. ‘Do you remember Clarence? Put to death through these your chosen allies! Christ, I still mourn... and you, you above all, handfasted now with
them
!’ Like a dropping wind the anger left him. ‘You shall be tried,’ he said coldly. ‘You shall receive your just punishment. Take him.’

The pikemen moved forward to flank Hastings.

‘Yea,’ he said suddenly. ‘I am indeed guilty. And I would no longer live.’

Richard made no answer, but turned once more, walking to the window near to me so that I caught the sound of his swallowed tears.

‘My lord,’ said Buckingham urgently to the Protector’s back, ‘shall these Woodvilles go unpunished in this affair? Shall Rivers, Vaughan and Grey not feel the Council’s anger? And the Queen...’

‘The Queen Dowager is my brother’s royal widow,’ said Richard, without looking round. ‘She can but be revered as such. As to the others—yea! my patience ends this day, as they shall.’

The tramp, tramp of Hastings’s guard struck a fading echo in the passage without.

‘And there,’ said the Protector, in a hard voice, and turning, ‘goes one better than all Woodvilles ever spawned. One whose quarterings put a blush upon their meagre blazon. Judases,’ he said, froth at his lips. ‘Betraying him into sin, as he betrayed us all.’ He spoke to Catesby. ‘Yea, send to Pontefract, Sheriff Hutton, Middleham. Set up a jury. And let them taste the Council’s wrath.’

He paced up and down. All watched him, and none keener than Morton, who looked as if, had he tablets, he would have written all this down.

‘I have sworn to avenge my brother of Clarence,’ Richard said. ‘And now, another I loved dies through these Woodvilles’ treachery. This, then, shall be my vengeance. Their deaths shall shroud my brother’s ghost. Ride north,’ he told Catesby.

As Catesby quit the room, Morton moved forward one pace, bowed low before the Protector.

‘My Lord,’ he said smoothly, ‘Stanley has thrown himself upon your mercy. Now must I do likewise.
Mea culpa
, your Grace.’

The wraith of a smile chased across the Protector’s lips.

‘Your head is safe enough, my lord,’ he said drily. ‘Yet mayhap you need a little space to think. It is no secret to me, my lord, how, by troth, you were made giddy by your own aspirations! Cardinal Archbishop! A fair title, sir, and one day yours mayhap, but for your treason. Now, I fear, never. Your strawberries have a passing foul taste...’

Someone chuckled softly. A vein at the corner of Morton’s mouth swelled and twitched.

‘Where shall your Grace put me to think on this?’ he said quietly.

It was Buckingham who had laughed.

‘Brecon, my lord,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Stout fortress, mine. I think you might instruct me in the ways of spiritual grace.’ He raised a brow at the Protector.

‘Yea,’ said Richard, dully.

When the heavy escort about Stanley, contrite and trembling, Rotherham, green with fear, and Morton, still, like a slumbering lizard, had quit the chamber, Richard called for John Kendall.

‘Write, good John,’ he said softly. ‘Draw up a bill for the King’s signet. That none of William, Lord Hastings’s lands or livelode be forfeit. That his widow, Katherine, shall enjoy all these goods and privileges, and my protection, as long as she lives. That she shall ever be defended against those who may seek to defraud her of her rights.’ His voice shook on the final sentence: ‘And that William, Lord Hastings shall never be attainted, and shall be interred in St George’s Chapel at Windsor, near to our late sovereign lord. As per his royal decree.’

Margetta went eagerly to see Jane Shore do penance. She came home pouting, saying that men had wept at the beauty of her naked breasts, limned in the glow of the candle that she carried all the way from Bishopsgate to Paul’s Cross, and that though some jeered, many there were who spat their lust upon the cobbles.