We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (2 page)

I
t was a fair, hot June when I rode to Hellesden to visit the Pastons, they being my guardian’s distant kin by marriage. I had ridden alone from Kent, leaving my lord’s chaplain muttering into his beard at the unwisdom of it, and I had turned to salute him with an edge of mockery in my farewell. I had seventeen years behind me, silver spurs, and the right to wear my sword without the belt. I was so gay as I journeyed through the cherry orchards that I returned the obeisance of the villeins with long bows, as if I were the Earl of Warwick. They gaped at me, standing like stricken fowls in their tunics of coarse-weave and their wide straw hats. One of the wenches threw me a bunch of fruit. They looked like rubies and tasted of wine. The people seemed happiest when they were in the fields; it was only the confinement of the manor court which appeared to bring about an increase in choler. I had sat for hours listening to their arguments. Of course they had their rights, but some tenants were cunning in their abuse and I had seen many a slow-witted farmer protesting to our stewards against a new title he had had no notion existed. I tried to take an interest in these matters. For the past year or so there had been talk from my guardian’s tongue of sending me to study law at Cambridge so as to equip myself with better understanding of such affairs; as for my own half-stifled ambitions, they seeped through all the forecastings of my mentors. For the sport of gentlemen, the serious subject of the Statute of Winchester, had become, to me, an addiction. O, you pagan god or devil, I know not, O Toxophilus, you had me by the throat. My friends dreamed of maidens, and other sinful joys. I dreamed of a sweet bow easy in the hand, one that does not kick: a bow fashioned of the finest Spanish yew, with its demoniacal paradox of sapwood and heartwood, the one resistant as an unschooled colt, the other pliant and gracious as Our Lady’s smile. And as I grew in length, so did my bow become tall and strong as I; and on my seventeenth birthday, my Saint’s day, I became the owner of the finest, the real
taxus baccata
, whose tip exactly matched the crown of my own yellow head.

In an indiscreet moment, I had mentioned my longing to become an archer
de maison
, for was I not the champion of three shires? My guardian’s lady had shrieked out loud and feigned to swoon, vowing that I should look upward, and that to labour thus would be but to demean myself. For did not common yeomen so employ themselves, and had I forgotten my lineage? Which in itself was foolishness, for having seen my father once, and marked his blazon and his heritage, I should have been want-wit to be heedless of it. I should of course see my father no more, and his terrible death did not haunt me, even when I burnt his Month’s Mind candle. As for my mother, why she was something fairer than motherly—proudly glad to wear the barbe and wimple of Lady Abbess. For these reasons, and for the thongs of kindliness and fair dealing, the Kentish castle was the only home I knew. But at seventeen the blood is hot, and the long struggle for independence begins. The trumpets have sounded, but the battle is yet to be joined. I did not think to find one in Norwich, for the Pastons’ quarrel with the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk was none of my affair. It had been going on for too long, and there was little to be done. None the less, I felt sad for young John Paston, and a little guilty besides, for not long after my arrival at Hellesden I had bested him at the butts and I took his money, three shillings and eight pence. Young John (I called him so to distinguish him from his brother John, a knight older but more frivolous) would have been deeply dishonoured otherwise. And he was full of misery. With the two Dukes biting great pieces out of the Paston estates, he said he had had no time to write to me, and with equally gloomy sympathy I replied that it mattered little, for I had no army yet to raise on his behalf, and most of my money was in trust until I came of age. The Pastons were always writing letters. Every day one or other of them would be pacing a room, feeding a yawning clerk with phrases, while trouble chased hope across their brows like a fox pursues a weasel.

And in the pleasant garden at Hellesden, with a great hole in the wall through which one of Suffolk’s cannon balls had plunged, I cast Young John further into despair. Through a faultless hold and a draw that perchance Pandarus himself might have admired, I beat him at the pricks, and above his little wistful murmur heard someone say: ‘What a beautiful loose he has,’ and smiled to myself.

I smiled, not just through boastful pride. For none watching knew of the struggle I had waged with my own recalcitrant body, over the years, to perfect the sport I loved the best. Because I am cursed with long-sightedness, the archer’s enemy.

The physicians had studied my eyes. As a tiny knave I remember how they pried with their bright round circles of polished brass. They hummed sadly together over my strange sight, for they too realized it could jeopardize my skill. How can an archer study the nock and the unwavering hold when already the fat white clout dangles close to his nose? If I looked closely at the image for a moment it would come rushing up to me. At first I had been a little afraid of how to construe this magic. I could mark the strike of a hawk far away over a plain or high above a thicket. I could see what prey dangled from its talons, down to the glazing eye. I could scan the face of friend or foe long before they knew who approached them. The charges on their shields, the powderings on their garments and the emblems on their horses’ housings were known to me outside the fifth part of a league. Once my keen sight had saved a child being swept away by the mill race. Others had thought it to be a cat in the water, but my eyes saw her black hair and clothing, and I had crossed a meadow to seize her from the flood. That day, I had even mused that I might, through this trick of nature, do some great person a service.

But archery, my leman! For that only, I battled with this useful fault. To ignore the abusing nearness of the target, to fix only upon the precious nock, to feel the urgent hemp pulled low to the right pap with a hand that wags neither up nor down, as Homer instructs us: the swift glance, the straight back and out-thrust chest—best for profit and seemliness—the yell of ‘Fast!’ and the unspoken command to those wilful eyes—thus did I conquer. It was a struggle, and at times I almost succumbed in the Castle of Perseverance. But it was the hand, the hand and the mind, and never the butt, wooed too soon by so many, which I bent to my will.

Enough of me. I would to my friend, the future King of Care.

Young John sighed, delving in his purse.

‘By troth,’ he said, ‘I would you lived nearer to help preserve us from our enemies.’

This made me laugh.

‘You would have me stand upon the keep and pick off Norfolk’s men? With Master Calle to fill my cocker with arrows plucked from the slain?’

‘Aye, Norfolk, or cursed de la Pole,’ muttered Young John. ‘And Suffolk married to the King’s sister...’

‘With Suffolk wed to Lady Bess,’ I said, ‘I would have thought an appeal might bear more force. Now that John your brother is at court.’

‘He wrote lately,’ said Young John bitterly. ‘Of tourneys at Eltham, folderols, fat horseflesh and fair ladies. I would liefer see him here, or at our poor Caister, than at the joust even against Lord Rivers. He had become betrothed to Mistress Haute,’ he added. ‘A Woodville kinswoman. He thinks to gain favour. Meantime we sit awaiting the place burned about our ears.’

Master Gloys came hurrying over the green towards us.

‘Sir, more trouble?’ asked Young John warily.

The Chaplain shook his head. ‘Not in these parts. But the King rides near, waging men to quell the northern rising.’

I had no intention of riding to war that day. So when the King’s train rode by it was only through curiosity that I mounted and followed them. They split into two bunches of knights and esquires, one of which passed through the orchard and down to the remains of a lodge, ruined by Suffolk’s men. It was then I first set eyes on Lord Rivers, marking his blazon; Young John was anxiously talking with him. Rivers wore white velvet over harness, and a sympathetic smile. Where the Woodvilles were, I thought, there would the King be also, so I rode off down the path and under the trees towards the lodge, hoping to spy out his Grace.

The lodge was a sad sight. Suffolk’s men had burst doors with battering-rams, and had planted a few accurate cannon-shots through roof and windows. They had then tried to start a fire, for the gaping doorway revealed blackened floorboards and a crumbling pit down to the cellar. Green weeds and grass sprouted from the masonry, like hairs in an old man’s ears.

There was someone standing a little inside the entrance, very still. A dark youth, of about my age, in demi-armour. There was not much to him, or of him, for that matter. He stood in shadow. He was alone. And that was my first ever impression of him; his utter loneliness. His horse cropped grass outside. I dismounted and went to join him. He appeared to be talking to himself. This was a habit I, too, enjoyed, when I needed to straighten something out in my mind.

‘Brutal,’ he was saying.

I was in agreement. ‘Yea, is it not?’ I said. I kicked the doorpost and a piece of it disintegrated and fell clashing through the floor with a great choke of filth. My companion stepped back a length.

‘This is not the way,’ he said. ‘Unnecessary violence. It is wrong.’

‘Violence is well, if the cause be good,’ I remarked.

He said sharply: ‘This cause is ill. For centuries the philosophers have argued over what constitutes a good cause, and cheating, tyranny, never were such, and never shall be.’

‘It was a fine place once,’ I said, looking about me.

‘And now despoiled,’ he said softly. ‘Doesn’t it sadden you? Thinking that masons and craftsmen once laboured to the glory of God for something of beauty?’

‘And now the vainglory of man has plucked it down,’ I murmured. He gave me a quick, peculiar smile, no sooner born than dead.

‘You renew my faith,’ he said. ‘I shall speak to the King about this.’

I thought him to be like John Paston, assaying to make his mark in Edward’s household.

‘How do you pleasure yourselves at court?’ I asked. His face darkened.

‘Well enough,’ he said shortly.

‘Let us go outside,’ I said. A huge bat dived out of the darkness and round our heads. My companion remained inside, picking up a piece of oak and weighing it in his hand. He had very slender hands, with fine jewels.

‘Sir, what’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Richard,’ he said, musing.

‘Richard... what?’

He turned and came into the sunlight.

‘Gloucester,’ he said, and his lips twitched. I saw everything at once, too late. I saw the Silver Boar on his mail, the unmistakable Plantagenet face. I saw that I had been talking to the King’s brother with no more respect than I would have shown Young John Paston. I saw myself a fool, and knelt.

‘Gracious lordship...’ I began, and heard him laughing softly. He struck my shoulder with his gauntlet, mocking me with knighthood.

‘Arise, sir,’ he said. ‘I have the advantage of you.’ He touched the arms upon my mantle, laughing again. ‘It is a pleasant sensation.’ We were then both merry together, when Sir Thomas Wingfield, of the King’s household, rode up to remind us that the King awaited his brother’s witness to the breaking-down of the lodge by Suffolk’s men.

‘A moment,’ Richard said, and faced me fully. ‘There’s rebellion in the north country. I need men. All who can draw a bow, wield an axe. Will you fight under my standard? Will you ride with me?’

Something, the name of which I shall never know, took possession of my soul. I had no intention of going to war, but before his last word was out I was again upon my knee, and in the presence of Sir Thomas Wingfield and others I do not remember, I became Richard of Gloucester’s sworn man.

We were a diverse company, that day we went forth on our first campaign. Four friends of John Paston rode by me: Bernard and Barney, Will Calthorp and Broom: my brothers under the Blanc Sanglier. As for that, there was just enough of a fair wind to make it fly, among the host of other banners dwarfed by the great arms of England. In the fields, men set down their tools and donned jacks and sallets to march with us. The wagons with their barrels of harness grumbled along the pitted ways, and the King’s falconers with the priceless gerfalcons and peregrines; the sovereign’s dogs; the coffer with the royal book collection guarded by the slavering, swaying deerhound atop of it. Up ahead rode the King. I could count the petals of the fleur-de-lys and the leopard’s claws on the royal standard.

Gloucester rode in the middle of the train, his squire bearing his shield and accoutrements. He talked to his henchmen in snatches—the ragged wind blew back his voice. Even in his harness he was very thin. Yet he could never have passed unnoticed. He was sober and gracious, and I spurred to ride near him, past the elegant back of Lord Rivers. The richly attired Lord Anthony, his father and young brother, were flamboyant and gay, tossing Latin quips and fragments of wit to one another, marvellously regal; hard to believe that their lineage was baser than my own.