We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (22 page)

‘Naught, sir, naught,’ said the carter, hauling Meg away.

She struck at him, tripping on her kirtle and turning with a swift aimless rage to bawl the last of her precious message.

‘The shedding of infants’ blood!’ she cried, and went flapping across the green.

So was I left, with a piece of ice in my chest and trembling so much that my horse trembled, and the young strumpet stared at me, saying: ‘Heed her not, sir,’ and looking uneasy: ‘’Twas the holy man who turned her with his talk.’

I looked upon the river and the closing blackness.

‘I would speak with yonder holy man,’ I said.

She laughed, twisting her hands together. ‘He is from afar off. Some land surrounded by water, so he said, where run the blessed streams of righteousness.’ She looked down at her feet. ‘I have never been out of London, sir.’

My mind took up her words as a man takes up a rotting apple, and spat them out. I thought on Richard Plantagenet. My King. My wife’s voice beat at me from the shadows: ‘Husband, do you know him? Truly?’ How, in God’s Name, shall one know a King... there have been many Kings, men who lived and squandered and laughed, Kings who wept and prayed and went mad, little Kings deposed by Fortune. King Richard, in glory. All that splendour, at Westminster, in York. All counterfeit? The rarity of his smile. Did that sombre quietness mask a heavy soul? His lenience, his rich bequests—could they all be made null and void by one dark aching voice? The look upon his face when young Harry spoke of the boys... his stillness, his slow but powerful anger, his swift deeds of retribution; no less, and no more, certes, than King Edward’s... his mercilessness to the traitor Buckingham, who would in truth have shown him none... mercilessness even so; his mercy to the Stanleys, Rotherham, Jane Shore... ah, Jesu! who should know a King!

As to Edward, the once and never King and his brother the meek Lords Bastard... For deposed Kings had been slain before my time. Dickon of Bordeaux had met his end at the hands of his uncles—yet Dickon had defied them, had struck Arundel bloodily upon the mouth in Westminster Abbey, struck him in insult over the corpse of dead Queen Anne. Dickon had died. Men said it. And now men said the Princes were no more. So groaned the treadmill of my thought.

The wench was staring at me. I could not answer her, or myself.

That was the evening of the first whisper. I rode home, wounded most grievously, in the chill dark.

‘Do you know the King, Margetta?’

‘My lord?’

‘Would you know him?’

She little guessed how lustily I owned that longing. For I now watched Richard with a great unbelieving fear, a hope and then a sadness, seeing his quiet, quiet countenance, remembering him when he had caught at my heart in his black mourning on White Surrey—when he had known my fault, had pardoned me. I scanned his face as closely as I were his leman, anxious for any sign that might give me the knowledge I feared, the release I longed for.

And I would with all my heart that we were again brothers in exile, that he were Dickon and I were Mark Eye, and I could lean over the table and ask him, with my branded hand on his:

‘Are the Lords Bastard safe, my friend?’

I took my daily walk around the Tower, and there were at most times little idling crowds, upward-looking. Two days before Epiphany I heard another whisper. My ears were strained for such murmurs, as for an ambush. Two friars it was this time. One was counting the day’s gettings, and his words were punctuated by the sharp rattle of coin. ‘I had it on good authority,’ he said. Clink.

The other crossed himself, his lips moved in a novena, while he looked envious at the other’s purse. He was stout, like Hood’s henchman in the ballads. His voice was like a draught of oil.

‘Tell me, tell me. What method did they use?’

‘Oh, that I know not,’ said the counting friar. ‘But he is wise, my friend, and vows they are no more.’

‘Crushed to death?’ said the stout one quizzically. ‘Strangled? Sancta Maria, what wickedness rules us now!’

‘Man was ever cursed,’ said the other. ‘Pray for their souls.’ Clink.

‘Ah God, yea,’ babbled the fat one lugubriously. ‘For they went violently and all unassoiled!’ Then, thinking so hard that a crease threaded his plump brow: ‘I would have staked all that... hm, hmm, that he was a devout man. I would not have deemed him one to leave any without
Dirige
and
Placebo
—whatever the deed... say, tell me again, who spoke you of all this?’

‘A monk of Calais,’ said the other, counting still. ‘A Cluniac, well schooled and born in Paris...’

‘A Frenchman,’ said the fat one doubtfully.

The other dropped a mark, retrieved it with creaking joints.

‘Men say,’ he murmured calmly, ‘men say the princes are no more. In France they sing of it. And in the fen country where English live and die...’ Clink. ‘They write of it. It is the truth.’

‘Shall we wager on it?’ said the fat friar wickedly. The other snapped his shoulders, cast a glance up at the Tower ramparts.

‘An you will,’ he said. ‘Five marks they are not seen again’—he pointed—‘where once they played so merrily.’

It was January when I asked Margetta would she know the King, and I took her to the special Court in the White Hall, which Richard had initiated to hear solely the pleas and grievances of the commonalty. Me, I had no mind any more. I watched my wife as she listened to the requests and to the answers they received at the King’s signet.

‘... that Robert Bolman, under-clerk in the Privy Seal office, has been overpassed in the promotion list by one Richard Bele—who by gift of money and by corruption of the other clerks has unlawfully attained such promotion; that this stranger, never brought up in the said office, should be ordered to stand down, and Robert Bolman succeed to the post, for his good and diligent service. Richard Bele, however, to be granted a clerkship at the first vacancy.’

‘...that the Prior of Carlisle being hard pressed to meet the £8 fee to Chancery for his royal licence... let the Clerk of the Hanaper return these monies gratis.’

‘...that the Vicar-General of Paynton, Master John Combe, shall promote Master Rauf Scrope to the Vicarage, which Master John Combe has presented himself by crafty dealing and to the undoing of Master Rauf...’

‘An annuity to our faithful minstrels, John Green and Robert Hawkins, who have served us well.’

‘The sum of forty-six pounds thirteen shillings and four pence to the repairing of the Church of Creyke, County Norfolk, lately destroyed by fire.’

‘...that Edmund Filpot of Twickenham, a bricklayer, who by misfortune had all his thirteen tenements, his dwelling and his goods suddenly burnt to his utter undoing, and who kept in his household a great degree of poor creatures much refreshed by his generosity—a Royal protection requiring of alms for the rebuilding of same.’

‘To one Master John Bently, clerk of poor estate, four pounds to defray his expenses at Oxford University...’

‘Know you the King?’ I asked Margetta harshly, as we left the White Hall.

She shook her head. She looked a little dazed.

‘He seems a fair man,’ was all that she could say. And ever, the roll read to the juries who tried cases in the Court of Common Pleas:

‘We charge you straitly to defend all our commons against oppressors and extortioners, to dispense justice without fear or favour, in mercy and fairness to all men, guarding against bribery and corruption. Justice for each man, be he humble or great. We charge you directly to follow our will in this.’

And all the time my treacherous heart beat out the rhythm of my pain. Where are the sons of Edward? Where? Where?

A cloud born of the news of the Tydder crept across the sun, word of a fresh invasion, of which King Richard disdained to speak in his correspondence with Brittany, as if deeming the Pretender of scant importance. Yet he was wary. Soon after the final sitting of his Parliament we took horse for Nottingham. That gloomy rock, that impenetrable fortress. At its feet, the town sprawled, straggling; all around for many leagues the flat counties, bristling black forest, lay under our surveillance. Here, the King’s hand rested upon the heart of the Midlands; a dozen couriers stood ready. Here, he could watch and wait, as he and I had once done together, young knaves, coaxing the nervous hours with chess. I was closer to him then. I asked him many questions and got fair answer, that other time at Nottingham. You shall ask a Duke but not a King. Had kingship changed him so utterly, or was it my own dread méfiance?

March yielded to April on our ride. A soft April of beauty, of stark branches suddenly clothed in tender green, and, new-washed by the drifting rain, each tight bud at last abandoned to flutter and show against the sun’s gleam; then a fast-flying oyster sky, then sun again. The calling throstle and robin dropped beads of song like jewels; in every tree there was a cuckoo, bold and full-throated and mocking, Gentle tips of green encroached upon the road. It grew hotter. On one side there was beauty, a field palled with gold and white, buttercup and dog’s-eye; on the other, merriment, as a rabbit washed behind its ears, saluting our splendour from a moss-green dais.

The Queen was sad, none the less. Gently, springshowerly sad. Her escort hung back and I took his place, on my sorrel, old now but still prancing the merry season out under her hoofs. Anne smiled at me.

‘It will be beautiful, northward, now, your Grace.’

‘The beck will be in spate,’ she said, bowing her head. I cursed my tongue. We were not riding that far north. Not to Middleham, and Edward of Middleham, who made all things green.

‘How does the Prince of Wales?’

Before she could answer, there was a scudding of hoofs and black regal looks from the Earl of Northumberland, come with tidings of the rebels still free, who had espoused Buckingham’s cause and roamed the country. The Crown Lieutenant read of the latest captures: Turbyrville, and Colyngbourne had been sighted. Twitching, sparse-spoken William had a price on his head. Last Tuesday forenoon he had been pursued and lost in London.

‘What news of France?’ asked the King.

‘Divided, and squabbling, since Louis’s passing.’

‘A minority rule moves people thus,’ said Francis Lovell. He rode close to Richard, making him laugh, touching his sleeve, pointing to a soaring lark and sending up his peregrine halfway to heaven in swift victory.

‘So perish your Grace’s enemies,’ he remarked, as the two birds clashed mid-sky. Sir William Catesby and Richard Ratcliffe jogged at the King’s side. They talked of the Parliament.

‘Justice for all,’ said Ratcliffe soberly. ‘How they extolled your Grace! And the statute of bail—why, they cried for Richard an ’twere Coeur de Lion returned!’

‘It was but their due,’ said Richard, and his face beneath the black velvet bonnet with its pearl brooch became a little more set. So Lovell cut in with a quip, peering forward to see his sovereign’s thoughtful smile. He loved him deeply, that was plain, as did Ratcliffe—and there was near-worship on John Kendall’s face. Had they heard the whispers? I mused; could they feel and do thus, if they had? They were none of them dissemblers—they were heartily pleased with the new Parliament and clung close to their King. Northumberland thought differently. With all his unhampered governance of the North, the Parliament gave him no joy. I had learned this through my need for a flagon of ale on a fierce March day, a fortnight earlier.

In the Mermaid, the booths are built like prayer-stalls, dark, high-backed. So it was only Northumberland’s voice, buzzing to my ear through four-inch oak, that told me of his presence. Neither had he seen me enter, from Friday Street. He had companions with him, two familiar voices and one to which I could not fit a face. They spoke of the King’s new statutes, with the incautiousness born of anger. Disgust rode high in Northumberland’s voice.

‘And at Oxford, because there was a man, a common peasant, who tattled of some poxy deed, said he’d been misused...’

‘Dog should have been whipped,’ said Sir William Stanley.

‘Misused, because he could not read the law!’ pursued Northumberland. ‘Thus, old Dick’—this contemptuously—‘turns the world about—commands the statutes writ in English! Jesu, now every snivelling dunghill whelp shall know himself a lettered man—like you, or I.’

‘The swine love him for’t.’

‘Yea. Perchance he would compose his Council of poor clerks and alewives!’

‘’Tis what he deserves, certes,’ said the voice unknown.

‘Push not so hot.’ (Thomas Stanley’s voice.) ‘Kneel to the King. Always.’

‘I had no other thoughts,’ said Northumberland mildly. Someone laughed. There was brief silence.

Then: ‘For how would you raise your levies now?’ A fist boomed on the table.

‘The evils of livery and maintenance!’ came Northumberland’s voice, cold with anger. ‘When he spoke out thus against it—Sweet Christ, I had ado to hold my tongue!’

Yea, Richard had forbidden this practice of binding oneself to a lesser lord and, fleetingly, I saw myself riding beneath Dorset’s standard. Yea, my lords, thought I, how will you raise your murderers now? Then, that righteous glow died in me, for to murder a murderer is surely just. God, where are the sons of Edward?

‘Yea, but how would you?’ persisted that quiet, unidentifiable voice.

‘By loyalty, the King says,’ and there was a general burst of mirth.

‘You look princely yourself, today,’ said the younger Stanley.

‘God be praised, I am well-purveyed,’ answered Northumberland. Then, fiercer: ‘Long may I continue... know you he has halved the Crown dues on no less than eighteen cities?’

‘Soft, sir,’ said Lord Stanley unexpectedly. ‘I... I fear him.’

Caxton had entered then, bearing the
Order of Chivalry
, its words moist. He had promised it for Sir Robert Brackenbury, but could not resist showing it to a few friends. I glimpsed the dedication: ‘Long life to King Richard, prosperous welfare and victory over all his foes.’ Carton smiled, bearded, gentle and with that pungent whiff of ink that clung to all his gowns, more sumptuous now than in days past.

‘His Grace came to see me at work yesterday,’ he said proudly. ‘We talked of the old time in Flanders. I had forgot most, but not he; how I showed him the Jason tapestry and the Palace of Wonder at Hesdin. A little, stern knave he was. “York will triumph,” he would say, staring me in the eye. “My brother will give us the victory.” ’Tis years ago. Then, I did trade in clothing...’ he tapped the book tenderly, blew invisible dust from its cover, ‘not this.’