We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (24 page)

I fed him the root of mandragora that brought him an evil, drugged rest. I sang to him on the harp, like David... I talked ceaselessly until he bade me silence, and what I talked of, or what he answered, I know not. I remember only one thing he said during those terrible days at Nottingham.

‘Truly,’ he said, looking about him with vacant gaze, ‘truly, this is the Castle of my Care.’

‘My entirely beloved son, whom God pardon.’

Thus spoke Richard, leaving Middleham for the last time. The castle’s great shadow stretched forward and touched us darkly. Edward lay at Sheriff Hutton; they had embalmed him, from his pale windflower face to his small straight feet. He slept beneath a heavy load of finest marble, bright with the quarterings of Neville and Plantagenet, and he played somewhere beyond the stars. He had not been sick, said Dame Jane Collins, when she could still her sobs—he was hale in the forenoon, then later complained of pain in his head and his bowels and burned up, despite all, all, most dread Sire. He sank into fever sleep and sleeping, died.

Ratcliffe called me to the King’s presence.

‘He is pleased by your watching with him in his sorrow.’

Irony. My bearing with him, of God’s judgment.

‘He commands you to remain north.’

Irony. Ratcliffe said sharply: ‘He does you honour.’

From the chantry came the thin high sound of Edward’s first requiem. Ratcliffe glanced towards the singing.

‘May blessed St Anthony guard him ever.’

At Middleham, the figure of Anthony, richly carved, gazed down from the priest’s stall. Anthony, patron saint of youth. And of swineherds, having the boar at his feet.

‘He would ask me often the story of the boar,’ Richard said, looking somewhere over our heads. Deep lines graved his face, as if newly carved by some mischievous mason. His cheeks were gaunt as a hollowed hand. I missed a feature hitherto taken for granted; the brightness of his eyes. I saw them dull, like riverstones, eyes at the bottom of a stream, and thought, without satisfaction and in great sadness: thus has his judgment maimed him.

‘Yea, Sire, the Boar, the White Boar,’ muttered Lovell, so put about still by grief that he would have talked nonsense, had the King wished it.

‘Lady Croft spoke me often of boars when I was five, puling and sickly,’ said Richard dementedly. ‘She called me the Tantony Pig... a boar guards her tomb, she loved me. Ah God! the world is full of tombs. They weigh it down.’

A robin (that same harbinger of death?) alighted in the window and, jouncing on an ivy twig, began its exquisite song.

‘How does my Queen?’ he asked, and even here there was no comfort, for Anne it was now who had to be conveyed in a chariot; Anne, who had wept every league to Middleham and, if she attempted to rise, swooned. She broke her sleep with little sobbing cries which turned to coughing, coughing. No balm could ease that cough.

‘Should she stay here?’ he said doubtfully to old Dr Hobbes. ‘I must to Scarborough; our fleet is ready and Norfolk needs my eye, my signet; but the Queen cannot ride...’

‘Your Grace will not leave without her,’ said Master Hobbes, with a little smile. ‘Not one mile shall you be apart now. She vows it.’

It was then that Richard quit the room, to sit beside the Queen, clasping her hand for many hours.

Thus, that summer of 1484—why, ’twas last summer!—I spent at York, and participated in the Council of the North, which was a machine of such wonderful ordinance that it was famed abroad. And I made journeys to the ridge of Scotland and back, a royal letter-bearer, one of many who kicked up England’s turves in King Richard’s courier system. By means of relay, so could a man in London get his bills within two days and a transaction be complete in less than a week. So the saying ‘news travels fast’ gave birth to rememberings in me, and, o’nights, lonely without Margetta, I thought of the two poor Sons of Edward, sticked with a dagger so men said, and cast into the ocean. Yet, strangely, there was half the despair in those thoughts while I lived in the north country. Among those barren crags and wild rapids, with the sudden natural shocks abounding—a bleak moor crowned with a noble abbey, the majesty of bright water falling through pure rocks, and trees to shame the emerald—there was the flavour of peace, of continuity. Stern country it was, in truth, but when it smiled...!

I came again to London, in November, where the King lay sick of a fever. And there, I was sorry. It burns me with sorrow, Master Brecher, to think on this.

By river I went, straightway to Westminster, shunning the public ways. For although, north, I had been free of whispers, the knowledge of their being sucked at my soul like a tapeworm in the belly of a child. My waterman, hunched raven-like against the fog, cried of the latest news over his shoulder. Tidings good and bad—trade with abroad was flourishing—piracy was less. His uncle, or cousin (Lord, how he prattled!) got reparation for a ship taken by French privateers last month. London was thronged with Germans and Scots devils. The King’s Grace had not been seen for days—did I think he was laying plans to withstand the invasion—for the Earl of Richmond would surely assay, come spring, to rape the realm?

So the Tydder called himself Richmond, now. Impudent. King Edward, dying, had termed him so, to Stanley, bidding him watch his wife... ‘Let not her impudent son aspire to harass my heir...’ Dear Jesu, I would not think on that heir, or his brother. I would fold my mind as the boatman folded the wool about his ears against the creeping fog. For I was bound to the service of King Richard, and I would fain forget a little, seeing that he was sick.

We whirled on a full-flowing cross current, passing beneath the bridge. The Tower, far behind, was a white blur in the greyness. Becalmed again, the oarsman sang to me, gaily, of Henry Tydder.

‘Does his mother live yet?’ he asked me.

I would not think on Edward’s sons, for should I be called to nurse the King, I might harm him with a thought. Yet were they stabbed in the throat, and with whose blade? Not Brackenbury’s, by all the saints, or Tyrell’s... there would have been assassins, paid silent men. King Richard’s men, snuffing those lives with gold-gloved hand.

‘Aye, fellow, the Countess is hearty.’

‘Then he is not Earl of Richmond,’ bawled the boatman, shipping his oars, his riddle solved. At Westminster pier I paid him his penny, while the Devil himself hung cackling at my elbow: ‘See you aught of the Lords Bastard?’ I watched his brow wrinkling, saw him counting the months, and dared not wait on his answer.

So I went on up the slimy stair, and without the Palace gate there was a herb-seller, standing with her pannier full of sweetness, wondrous fresh and fair, a maid that looked up at me with her virgin’s eyes, child-eyes clear and sheen.

‘Look, Sir Knight!’ she said, pushing the little bunches to wards me. ‘Good spice! Brought all the way from Eden—down the river that flows from Paradise!’

I looked at her shining face, and the nepenthe she offered me, and I stooped to kiss her soft mouth; and then I bought from her a root of the Black Hellebore, perchance to ease my melancholy, and a sprig of Valerian, Our Lady’s blessed herb, that drives all ills away. She looked up at where the royal standard hung in mist, and said simply: ‘God send the King good fortunes,’ and so fair was she, she minded me of another clean young face I had once seen, and forgotten. And I ran up the steps through the stony guard, and entered Westminster.

‘On your life, let none know he is sick.’ This was Lovell, gliding like a wraith beside me in the passage.

‘What ails his Grace?’

‘I am not a physician,’ he said, frowning. ‘I know only that he has pushed himself to the edge of disaster this summer. Since the Prince of Wales died, he was wont to ride ten leagues a day and work half the night. He came from revictualling the fleet at Scarborough worn to the bone.’

We reached the King’s chamber.

‘Only yesterday could he bring himself to name his heir,’ said Lovell softly. ‘He wanted Warwick, but the child’s near-idiot, and under attainder...’

‘Who, then?’

‘John, Earl of Lincoln,’ said Lovell. ‘Also a true Plantagenet.’

I entered the King’s chamber, afraid. Flames ate steadily at a great log the length of the hearth, while the doctors clucked and chaffered around the King, who sat uneasily in a chair near the warmth, with the shadow of the flames licking his cheek. Papers lay strewn before him, and Kendall leaned to catch words and write them down, words wellnigh buried beneath the fussing voice of Master Hobbes, itching to use his blood-irons.

Kneeling, I presented the dispatches from York. I fastened my gaze upon the hands lowered to me, and their heavy rings. On his thumb the King wore a skull wrought from a ruby, wondrous small. A
memento mori
, of God’s Death, and the ultimate destiny of man; I heard my voice expressing my sorrow in his sickness.

‘It is little,’ he said. ‘’Twill soon be mended.’

‘If your Grace would only rest!’ cried Hobbes despairingly.

I looked up at last, to see the King’s profile flickering against the flames.

‘You make much of naught,’ said Richard.

I could hear one of the other physicians muttering crossly: ‘Fits, faints, swoons! May I go hang if these are naught!’

‘Is York still fair?’ Richard asked me.

‘Yea, lord, the fairest city in your realm... in great St Peter’s the choir excels...’

He was scanning the rolls I had brought, eagerly murmuring to himself each signature as it unrolled beneath his eye; the Mayor and burgesses; the Council of the North; the writings from the Gaol delivery. Once, he said: ‘Good!’ then he knit his brows, held the paper closer, sighed, let it fall, and passed a hand over his eyes. The physicians stopped whispering and waited.

‘’Tis more an agony of spirit, this,’ he said, so softly that only a few caught it. ‘I shall retire now.’

They pulled out the trestles from under the King’s bed. I knew that four or five would watch him this night, as he was so unwell. I picked up the parchment he had dropped, a bill for the Masses at Sheriff Hutton, for Edward’s soulkeeping. Then, amid a rising babble of protest, he said: ‘I would be alone tonight. One only shall guard me,’ and his eyes, with the red firelight still in them, fell and rested on my wretched face.

‘You shall give me the news of York,’ he said softly. ‘That will bring sleep, better than any potion.’

They withdrew swiftly, too swiftly, all of them, while I, seeking to calm a strange new trembling, put the great dog which seldom left him outside to the grooms’ hands, and drew the bolt stoutly across, and went with my drawn sword behind the arras and in the gardrobe; I smoothed back the damask sheets and the purple coverlet, and set the Night Livery, the bread, the wine, on a side table ready for his need. I received his jewelled collar, and turned a key upon it. I unrobed him of the silk shirt, the fine hose, and felt them burning damp, like a marsh-fire. And I gowned him for bed to which he climbed, to lie looking at me. So was I left alone, with the King who, men said, had had his nephews put to bed for ever.

I had not been alone with him before, not even at Nottingham, and there, in any case, he hardly knew me, for he was in Hell.

How should I sleep? Close to his feet I lay, houndlike, staring at the ceiling. The fiery shadows played games there, dark demons among running blood, open-mouthed faces screaming without noise. There were no sounds, but once, faintly, I thought I heard the clank of a halberd outside the door; again, lying wide-eyed, I seemed to hear quiet coughing... Lovell said that the Queen coughed all night. A sick Queen, a sick King. A dead Prince. God’s indignation at its mightiest. All quiet again.

He had been kindly to me in Flanders, when I had worried and wept over Margetta, and for this reason I sat up and looked, over the mounded quilts, to whence the King’s soft breathing came. I saw the dark of his head against the rich carvings, thrown into sharp relief by the flickering fire. I looked at him, and at the panels depicting the Holy Sepulchre on his bed, the only bed that he could sleep in, and which, said Lovell, he took everywhere. It could be broken down and amassed again within the hour. He was breathing almost noiselessly, and I lay low again, thinking great treason—the same thoughts of course, and I was thankful that thoughts are soul-sealed, to be given tongue only by the old, the drunk, the mad.

I know not how long I mused thus, feeling my trembling that grew and grew until the trestle quaked beneath me, nay, shook the great bed of the King, until I was afeared I would awaken him, and, trying to still my limbs, knew with a start that it was not my trembling, but his, Richard’s. It shook the bed, my trestle, as if a giant’s hand rocked it. Then I heard him moan once, through his teeth, and like an arrow I was at his side.

I touched his hand, to find it cold as glass, like an empty hearth in a ravaged castle. Chill moisture stood on his brow, and yet the room was warm still, warmer than comfortable—and Richard cold.

I ran and poked the fire, clattering the irons about. I chafed his frigid hands in mine, piled furs upon the bed. Even in the half-light I could see his pallor, and how his eyes roved about. And I thought: Is there no end to this judgment? He is still my King.