We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (21 page)

Lying in his bathing-tent, he grinned up at me.

‘More hot water!’ he cried. ‘Pour it on my head, good fellow.’ Spluttering, he emerged from the scented cascade. ‘Holy Mother, that is good! All the dirt of England clings to me still. Forsooth, a short but muddy little skirmish!’

All over the Palace men were cleansing themselves of that march. And at Salisbury, six feet of the same autumn mire clothed Buckingham.

‘How did he die?’ I asked.

Ratcliffe grimaced. ‘Hotly, and without grace,’ he answered. ‘He would have felt better, I trow, had one blow been struck. Ah, Richard! What a strategist!’ And he launched into a eulogy of the King, of his tactics in driving the wedge between Buckingham and the rebels in the west and south, bubbling soap and enthusiasm while the
valetti
washed him and listened wide-eyed.

‘But I ever deemed the Duke was mad,’ he said bluntly. ‘To set himself against a warrior like the King, and all ill-armed and ill-prepared, with such a scanty following and the cautious Tydder hovering mid-sea...’ He soaped his hands, lost in his thought. ‘I went to call him from his cell to face the jury. He knelt to me, and wept, begging to see the King. “One word only,” he repeated, ever and anon. “Take me to him—he will not refuse my plea.” And when we told him that Richard utterly abjured his request he smiled strangely and said: “Richard loved me well—he saw dead George in me”.’

‘Richard would not see him?’

‘Nay—he turned his face from those who bore the message and said, hot and cold: “He is the most untrue creature living,” and went away. This I told to the Duke, who took his finger from his eye and grew red once more, like a turkey-cock. Then it was I reckoned him mad, in truth, for he babbled of the Lords Bastard, of all things, and said the King would rue the day.’

‘What day?’

Ratcliffe shrugged water from his back. ‘That day, I trow,’ he said vaguely. ‘The day they sliced Buckingham’s head from his shoulders and the hand off his wrist to brand him a traitor. Mad he was, then and always. Power turns men.’

‘So he died bereft of all.’

‘Bereft of Morton, his chief adviser,’ said Ratcliffe suddenly. ‘And there is one who is not mad. As wise and cunning as ever Elizabeth Woodville deemed him. We ran him to the monastery of Croyland in his own diocese of Ely, and there we lost him. He has the Devil’s luck.’

‘And where lies he now?’

Ratcliffe laughed, shortly. ‘Who knows? Men vow he is in Brittany, licking the hurt pride of his Welsh Pretender!’ He shuddered. ‘Jesu! I would see that prelate’s head upon a pike. More hot water, sirs! I am not yet cleansed!’

All this I recounted to Margetta, whom I had not seen for far too long. I swear her wenches lit candles against my lechery. It was not seemly, they whispered, withdrawing from her bower under my gaze. Yet she was not for bedsport that day. She put me off with little words, and as on another occasion, Mistress Shore filled her head.

‘By St Catherine, you know what now?’ This, with eyes that dulled her diamond reliquary.

‘What now, sweeting?’

‘The King’s Solicitor-General, Sir Thomas Lynom...’ she whispered.

I stretched upon her bed—coarse fellow, with my boots on.

‘A good man, and well-purveyed of livelode,’ I said, nodding and smirking.

‘He went to see her in Newgate, and now he wants to marry her!’

‘Perchance he likes well her body,’ I said gently.

‘He petitioned the King. Tib told me.’

‘Yea, he petitioned his Grace,’ I answered.

‘What a fool! What hope!’ she snapped. ‘She is destined to rot and die in Newgate. She wrought great treason against the King.’

‘Certes, that she did.’

‘Well?’ she said angrily. ‘What think you of that?’

I summoned my strength. Tall, strong Margetta, I pulled her down beneath me, and bared her twin roses.

‘What breasts! What paps!’ I murmured. ‘There were never such in the whole realm... Jenny Shore is an empty gourd compared with this... and this...’ the robe slipped further... ‘and there was never such a Mount of Venus in the world... not even in Bruges’ (Satan on my tongue) ‘where the women are wondrous fair.’

‘At least I am not a traitor.’ She gave a little whine.

‘Nay, lady,’ said I. ‘Yet even an you were, the King would pardon you. For’—holding her tight, arms pinioned—’King Richard has written kindly to the Bishop of London regarding Jane. He would see his Solicitor-General content, and thinks that Jane has suffered over-long in gaol... He has had her removed from Newgate, to the care of her father, and says that if good Sir Thomas is still so inclined... he... shall... have her.’

Therewith, feeling and not feeling her little rageful hands beating my back, I did such that made her cry shame, and made me exceedingly well content.

‘You live in the old times, sweeting. For it is surely no longer sin to love one’s own wife!’

‘I am a wicked, envious woman,’ she said, beginning to weep.

‘Come, be merry,’ I said. ‘What of my children?’

‘The one you gave me that kept me long in York... well, you can hear him, bawling for his sire.’ And sure enough, little Richard, for so I had named him in the King’s honour, was cutting the nearby air with lusty cries.

‘Josina is well. She can read better than I. But Edmund—’ here she sighed.

‘Tall, strong, handy with a bow already,’ I said happily.

‘My lord, he is past eight years,’ she said, frowning. ‘’Tis full time that he left our home. I spoke with my lady of Norfolk lately, wondering where best to place him.’

‘Does he still cough?’ for Edmund had a grinding in his breast that I had heard before, during the sad hot-weather days of Queen Anne. A thought grew in me, how that Anne waxed pale in London, strong in the north. The King had manors away from all dirt and disease, where henchmen were ever welcome. I began to count off Richard’s strongholds in my mind. Sheriff Hutton—his bastard John lived there, young Warwick too, and John, Earl of Lincoln, son of Richard’s sister, Elizabeth of Suffolk. Then there was Middleham, wild and beautiful; Pontefract, and Barnard Castle, where, men said, the singing-boys excelled. Edmund had a fair pure voice—he could do well.

I called Edmund and the nurse brought him. His hair was Italian black; he looked foreign. His eyes were grey and looked through me.

I told him he was going away.

‘Where, sir?’ he asked equably.

‘Barnard Castle, an the King sees fit.’

‘Yea, good Father,’ he answered, and glanced up, with the straight square look of a bowman.

‘Shall you speak to King Richard?’ Margetta asked.

I deliberated.

‘Brackenbury has lately been made Constable of Barnard Castle as well as of the Tower,’ I said. ‘He shall speak for me.’ I looked sharply at Margetta, who was, by her countenance, ill-pleased again.

‘Does it not content you?’ I asked.

‘I was thinking about Jane Shore,’ she said. ‘Husband, is the King altogether wise? To pardon that strumpet who has wrought him such ill—to approve her marriage with such a great knight. And Stanley! See how he cherishes him, making him Constable of England in lieu of Buckingham, while it was that wife of his who worked this latest mischief. By God, he should hang them all.’

‘You would have made a passing fierce monarch,’ I said.

‘He has not even punished Lady Beaufort,’ she said. ‘Only bound her to be a good a-bearing in surety of her husband. Tib told me.’

‘Tib should be an agent of the Crown,’ I said a little bitterly, for some days I seemed fogged by ignorance of what was afoot.

‘Tib thinks the King is over-gentle,’ Margetta said, with a curious look.

‘Tib thinks overmuch. Tib will have her tongue in a brace,’ I said, angry.

‘He’s not like Edward,’ Margetta said meekly.

‘Does Tib know the King?’ I shouted. ‘Do you know him, my lady? Because he does not milch the City with benevolences—because he does not punish and slay willy-nilly—because he does not lie with every mercer’s wife in Bishopsgate—does he displease you? God’s Bones, lady, do you know the King?’

Margetta raised eyes, diamond-bright.

‘Do you, my lord?’ she asked.

‘My horse!’ I shouted, and a page leaped from the hearthstone. It was because she, my wife, had touched off voiceless doubts lying ever in my mind that I shouted. She might as well have called Richard weak, and I had seen him fighting on the field, a superhuman strength within that frail body—so I was powerfully angered at her
insouciance
.

‘I will sup with Sir Robert Brackenbury,’ I said, and while she bent again, smiling, to some pretty tapestry of hawks and saints, the echo of my own anger beat at me, for who
does
know a King? As I rode through London, its pavements slimed with dead leaves, I thought to myself: Do I know him? Truly?

There was a mist rising from the river, full of November rot. The tower, all four hundred years of it, hung ghostly and tall, its feet in fog, its crenellated heights almost gathered into the dark. There was a knot of common people standing beneath the walls of Garden Tower, craning upward as for a visitation. I rode on past them and dismounted at the postern gate, through which a dim red light shone. My second rap brought the sentinel peering through the bars. I asked for Sir Robert.

‘He is not here,’ said the guard unceremoniously.

I knew these knaves, suspicious, well-flown with pride from sitting in their little brazier-lit cavern, jangling their keys, and kings in their own right.

‘Open,’ I commanded, raising my shield so that my quarterings were visible.

He disappeared in a cacophony of creaking wards as the great lock yielded. The door groaned open, revealing familiar sights: scurrying henchmen, great hounds tearing at a bone, a fool with a popinjay, a boy sitting cross-legged, mending a shattered hauberk. A couple of pages wrestled in one corner oblivious of the fury of two Augustine friars poring over a sacred chronicle. The Constable of the Tower was absent, in truth.

I thought of Sir James Tyrell. He would bear my message, to Sir Robert, if not to the King himself.

‘Not here, sir,’ said the guard.

Well, where, then?’ I asked hotly. ‘And where is Sir Robert?’

‘Ridden out,’ he said, and looking down, began to whittle a piece of wood.

‘Take a message,’ I said, my impatience rising.

‘Mayhap,’ he said, not looking up.

‘It is
important
,’ I said, between my teeth.

‘Great knight,’ he answered, ‘I know not when Sir Robert will return. He had pressing business in the... realm.’

The fellow was concealing something. On whose behalf I knew not, but it made me angrier. I jerked him close to me, and he stared me out, unfeared.

‘Do you know me?’ I asked.

‘Nay, sir,’ he said, still staring.

‘Why did you open?’

‘You are King Richard’s man,’ he said simply.

I let him go. He was broad as a bull, and seemed twice as dumb. Yet his eyes were crystal clear.

‘Can you give this message to Sir Robert on his return?’

‘Yea, if he returns,’ he said.

‘It concerns my son. Tell him I would place him as a henchman. He is eight years, full strong in body and wit. Sir Robert has the wardship of Barnard Castle.’

‘None shall enter Barnard Castle,’ he said, swaying a little on his feet. If ever I saw one repeating a lesson, here was he. ‘There is no room for pages there. It bursts at the seams with boys, Sir Knight.’

Fate was against me, then. This man knew more than I, it seemed. He and Tib would have made a fine pair.

When I rode out the sky towards Westminster was flushed with red as the sun went down, and the little gathering of people still stood with their quiet talk, beneath Tower wall, pointing upward. I reined in by them, following their gaze up to the empty battlements almost completely shrouded by dusk. They talked in low tones: a carter, an old hag and a young wench who lacked only the gown of ray to play a harlot. Standing a little apart from them was a cowled monk. I caught the tail of their talk.

‘Up there they were,’ said the carter. ‘Each day of last Mayor’s term I watched them, shooting at the butts. And a beautiful loose had the little one; he always won.’

‘It’s not true, certes,’ said the young woman, and I heard her start weeping. ‘An it is, poor, poor little knaves!’

‘Yea, a-playing and laughing they were, lovesome and young,’ grindled the old crone. ‘Like his father, was Neddie—tall and straight. A-playing and a-growing, unto St Michael near enough.’

The carter spat. ‘Aye, ’twas Michaelmas I saw them last—then I saw them not, and thought it naught, till this night when the brother here...’

I saw the monk’s face, a thin arrow of white beneath his black hood. Then suddenly he spun on his heel, drew fast his robe and went with a steady measured lope across the strip of green, over the cobbles and down to the watergate, whence came presently the plash of oars, fading.

‘And never gave us his blessing!’ said the carter indignantly.

They saw me, and were a little taken aback. The carter hung his head. The young wench ogled me nervously, but the old crone cried for alms, spreading her ragged skirts. I spun a groat into the darkling air.

‘It grows late for sight-seeing,’ I said.

‘Sir... we were looking for a glimpse of... King Edward’s sons.’

‘And did you see them?’ I asked pleasantly enough.

‘Not for a full moon,’ said the carter stoutly.

The old woman came and took my stirrup in her filthy claw. She looked at me with the horrible knavish confidence of the ancient. I felt her spittle-spray.

‘The good brother knows,’ she whispered, fondling the coin I had thrown her.

‘He that was here lately?’

She glanced down towards the dark river. ‘Yea,’ she muttered. ‘Terrible things he told—ah, tales bloody and black. He knows all manner of privy things. About the King...’

The carter, tugging, was at her elbow. ‘Come home, Meg,’ he said, with curses. ‘Good my lord, she’s old, ale-fuddled. Now she’ll drink more, through your lordship’s aid. Dame, come away,’ he said angrily, prodding her like a sheep.

‘What of his Grace?’ I said. It was no longer damp, misty, chill November. It was dead winter, and I was in its grip.