We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (25 page)

‘Sire, you are frozen—a posset—I will fetch Master Hobbes—’ I said wildly.

He caught my hand. A grip as hard, as cold as stone.

‘Nay,’ he said, and his teeth chattered. ‘They are... too many... good doctors all, but they stifle me with their ardour... there’s no cure for this sickness. I am not sick.’

I stepped away from him, to lap his feet in blankets, poured wine, which he spilled on the sheet through his trembling, and said again:

‘I will send for your Grace’s physician straightway.’

He said, strongly: ‘I forbid. Lord! I am cold!’ and he touched his heart, saying: ‘In every vein here—I feel it like snow on the moors, deep, and hard.’

I could not warm him. I rose from the bed, thinking to get a brand from the fire to hold near his hands, but those same hands detained me.

‘Stay!’ he said. His head sank on the pillows, beneath the Holy Sepulchre. So I looked at him for a space, with the two poor sons of Edward howling in my mind, and Richard being my King and I his body-knight, I did assay to do the best I could. I lay beside him. I took him in my arms, his face against my breast, and held him closely, and warmed him. Presently, his shuddering ended, he slept, and I, warning myself to stay awake, slept also.

His first anguished cry tore my slumber apart. Seeking wildly his presence by my side, I found him gone. The fire was almost out, but in the corner of the room a small blue flame, lit by him, illumined the statue of St George; a youthful relic, gleaming tranquilly for all that a King lay prone beneath it. With spinning head I left the couch, hearing against that dreadful sound. One word, muffled, yet stark with meaning.

‘
Peccavi
!’

I went on tiptoe, miserable, unsure, and knelt, close to one of his outflung hands. He clutched a heavy silver crucifix; I tried to pray, but when I heard once more: ‘
Peccavi
!’ I thought only: Aye, lord, you have sinned, in truth; then next: he will be chilled again and the fault mine—so I lightly laid my hand on his, and all but drew back from its heat.

If he had been cold before, an inferno now raged in his blood and I was sore afraid, for so had King Edward seethed before the dying. Thus it was that I knew I loved Richard, despite all, and it was passing hard to witness his privy sorrow, for a crime that had robbed him of all hope of Heaven. So I kept my hand on his and in a quivering silence said: ‘Peace, my dear lord.’ And he rose up from his face and, kneeling, looked at me, and when he said, ‘You are a good man,’ I felt an aching in my heart and was glad my thoughts were hid from him. He gazed again at the little flame and the George, who guards pure knighthood, and said, deeply:

‘May God forgive me! For sending
him
to the block!’

In that moment I did not understand. He began to talk swiftly, in the way he had, half to himself, but with the tincture of anguish in each syllable.

‘I! who once talked of forgiveness—of Our Lord forgiving seventy-fold... I! who could not forgive!’

He swung round and caught my arm; he was mindless and fever-hot. All rapid grief, his voice hammered my ears.

‘Perchance... well... well... aye, ’twas because I loved him so dear I could not have borne him near me afterward, knowing of his treachery... Morton and Stanley... sometimes I wonder about Stanley... they did not cut so deep! Yea, his was the bitterest betrayal of all. Sweet Christ, how I regret that day! Ah, Hastings, who led us northward once to find a King! Ah, William, William!’

He beat his breast, weeping. Sweat ran down his face.

‘Verily, I was loath to lose him,’ he said.

I spoke not one word. I had seen the King’s guilt, like a bare bleeding wound. And it was Hastings that he repined—Hastings, grown man and traitor, who had courted death and deserved it. I saw Richard Plantagenet, sick with penitence in the dark hours. For Hastings, justly slain, like the traitor Beaufort, the traitor Buckingham. And with never a thought to his true victims... two little knaves, lying somewhere deep, all unassoiled...

Men said the Princes were no more. They told it in the taverns, and holy men, washed by the blessed streams of righteousness, saddened folk with the story. Even the shadows shrieked it.

Yet Richard, wanton-tongued with grief and fever, repented Hastings only.

I milled the hellebore fresh root, milled it extra fine, while he sat limp and sweating like a blood horse that has been pushed too hard. I bent eye and ear upon the handmill so as not to look at him, or to hear the murmured words that poured from him still. He was bound on self-castigation; the evil humours boiling in his body had touched his brain, undamming a stream of guilt. My thoughts were dreadful thoughts. I milled faster. The smell of the root, mouldy and sharp at the same time, rose up. Hellebore, for mania, melancholia. I laid the powder on a crust and took it to him, looking down at his feet, at his calves rubbed raw from saddle-hours, anywhere but at his face. I tried to be deaf, while he raved, quietly, of Hastings, of past sins, little sins of the flesh, of impatience and passion... he would make me his confessor and I longed to fly the room, for soon I thought he would speak of the worst thing of all... I offered him the medicine, with lowered head.

‘What is it?’ he asked sadly.

‘A simple to cure your grief, Sire. A plant of easement.’ Then, shaking, I told him what the herb-maid had said.

‘Ah God, yea,’ he said, taking the crust from me. ‘The river that flows from Paradise! Give me of it, then, my friend. Give me aught of Paradise. It seems I have lost mine.’

He would make me his confessor, and I could not bear it. He would speak of the Princes, crying of how, in a moment of temptation, the Devil got him by the soul—the details of how they died, and why. Why? Why, deposed Kings had been killed before my time. Men said it.

He would make me share his burden, and I was not strong enough.

‘Eat, Sire.’

He looked at the bread, then at my face. My eyes flew away quickly.

‘You think only of my comfort,’ he said softly. ‘Am I worthy?’ I felt my hot blood rising. ‘Your Grace!’ But feeble words could not hold back his thought.

‘There was none other,’ he said desperately. ‘A bastard cannot rule. Ah, holy God! Did I do right to wear the Crown?’

‘Sire. Hush and hush, I implore you,’ I muttered. For he opened his heart, as no King should do before one such as I; opened all, like the besieged gates of a famished city. And my thoughts were dreadful beyond knowing. For he did not speak of the Princes, the Lords Bastard, and a growing fear stole over me, clouding my eyes—a dread I dared not name but one which rose up and shaped itself from whispers, screaming skulls, bogies in the dark night; whispers, bloated and fat and obscene, pursuing Truth down a long hill into the valley where dead men lay... a dread of my own thoughts, my own past beliefs. I did not see him rise from his chair. Suddenly he was by the hearth, nudging the cold grey ashes with one foot. The log he touched crumbled apart, fell to powder, cold and dead.

‘So burns away a dynasty,’ he said softly. ‘So lies my only son. Next year, I would have buckled the Garter about his knee... now... all finished. Saw you the Queen today? My Anne’—his face contorted—’will bear me no more children.’

Now, my mind craved his confession. I would fain have him talk of the Lords Bastard... how they were done to death, a matter of privy policy. He had been judged. It was enough. Let him unburden himself to me and have it marked down after as mere sick ravings... let him take away the dreadful doubt, the doubt I could not own.

The knowledge that my sight had failed me, that I had listened where I should have looked—that I had given credence to foul lies... I felt faint suddenly. He had his hand upon my shoulder, and he was talking yet.

‘All my hopes,’ he said. ‘Gone, like a dream. England would have smiled under my son’s hand... would to God he had been strong and hearty, like my dear bastard John! Shall the name Plantagenet be thus swept away for ever? Our rich, royal line... how shall we be remembered?’

The pressure of his hand grew, bowing me at his feet.

‘I have endeavoured to show favour and mercy. I have tried to do what is right. For England. Yet...’

He ceased. The tabor of my heart went drumming. I kept my eyes upon the King’s bare feet. There was wood-ash on the toes.

‘Yet there are those who speak great treason against me,’ he said, very quietly.

Three pains had I. One behind each eye, a deep burning soreness where a swelling river ran, and another, across the knuckles of my hand, at which I looked to see an old scar, talisman of faith, upsurging as if newly branded.

His voice came to me through a cloud.

‘Always, you brought me comfort,’ he was saying. ‘This night, you gave me your good warmth. You cooled my blood with herbs. Now, I pray you, ease my spirit.’

It came with difficulty, ‘How, your Grace?’

His hand crossed my vision, pointing. ‘Take up the Book of Hours, and read.’

I lit candles. I took the
Horae
from a chest, undid its clasps. I opened at the first page, a Collect of St Ninian, scrolled at the beginning of each line.

‘Turn to the end,’ he said almost inaudibly. It was a prayer, plain, black and unembellished. Someone had borne very heavily on the page when writing.

‘“Most merciful Lord Jesu Christ, very God, who wast sent into the world by the Almighty Father to loose our bonds, to lead Thy flock back to the fold, to minister to contrite hearts, to comfort the sad, the mourning and the bereaved, deliver us from affliction, temptation, sorrow, sickness and distress of mind or estate, and from all perils in which we stand.”

No penance I could do would ever be great enough. If the whispers, lying, had snared me in their filthy web... ten thousand candles would not burn my shame away.

‘“Stretch out Thine arm, show Thy grace to us, and free us from the sorrows which we endure. Even as Thou didst free Abraham from the Chaldees, and Isaac from the sacrifice; Jacob from the hands of his brother Esau, Joseph from the hands of his brethren. Noah in the ark from the waters of the Deluge, Lot from the City of Sodom, and Thy servants Moses and Aaron, with the children of Israel, from the hand of Pharaoh and the bondage of Egypt...”’

He knew this prayer by heart; I could hear him echoing my voice in a breath. I read as never before, giving each fair round phrase its proper emphasis, breathing comfort into every word.

‘“Saul on the Mount of Gilboa; David the King from the power of Saul and Goliath the giant. Even as...”’

The script merged, blurred. Had I been prepared, I might have managed it, but even that I doubt.

‘“Even as... even as...”’

A cry was choking in my throat. My power of sight was gone. There was only silence, mine and his.

‘“Even as Thou didst save Susannah from false accusation,”’ he said, in his beautiful voice.

Knave and fool, I stood, while the leaves of the
Horae
trembled and fell together. Just before the trumpet sounds, and the graves are opened, the silence will be as that silence.

‘Read on,’ he said, gently.

I could not read, neither could I see. I, of the keen sight.

‘Why do you not look at your King?’ he asked.

My blood answered him, by rushing in redness over my neck and face. Then, I heard him laugh, a truly awful sound.

‘You too?’ he said, passing soft. ‘You too have searched your heart in prayer and found me guilty?’

The floor was hard under my knees.

‘Yea,’ said Richard. ‘Men speak treason against me. Need I repeat you what they say?’

He began to pace about, talking the while, a quiet, hard tirade that swelled and faded as he turned.

‘They say that I have destroyed Ned and Dickon—to what end God only knows. Once, you spoke to me of hatred and I answered that I knew it not. Ah God! now I feel that my soul is indeed endangered by that passion...’ He stopped, both talking and walking, and I prayed that he had done, but he went on, his voice like a leaden maul on steel.

‘They also murmur,’ he said raspingly, ‘that Our Blessed Lord sent retribution when He took my son, laid low my wife... do I, then, know your heart?’

I looked up. The gathering shadows seemed to suck him into their midst. He was King Richard once more, not the sick young man I had held in my arms. A distant clock struck, thrice, and on the third note’s death I said, whispering:

‘I can brook no evil thoughts against your Grace.’

He laughed, a bitter sound. ‘Because I am your liege lord? How short, then, is the memory of mankind. Certes, I feel sometimes I have the longest memory of all.’

He beckoned me from my knees, and came near. The candle of his eye was very large, perchance from the medicine. He was all eyes, dark, shining.

‘Cast back your mind,’ he said. ‘We were brothers in exile, at Bruges.’

I managed to speak, steadily enough.

‘I remember well,’ I said. ‘When you held my hand in fire and asked my allegiance.’

‘Which you betrayed,’ he said, sword-swift.

‘All unwittingly and to my own sorrow since, Sire,’ I answered. ‘I have said my
culpa
many times, since Stoney Stratford. I would thrust my head, not my hand, in fire now, to your service. It was my folly that I trusted Sir Anthony... he spoke so fair and King Edward had an oath, while dying...’ He cut me short, placing his fingers on my lips.

‘You are right,’ he said. ‘’Tis past. O Lord! the mistrust that treachery has bred in me! Tell me, is there any loyalty? Any love? Any kindness left? Any gratitude?’

‘You are exceedingly well beloved, your Grace,’ I whispered, my keen sight gone swimming in a mill-stream of tears. His fingers rested on my arm, with a kind heaviness.

‘You have known all my loves,’ he said. ‘My people, my wretched, oppressed poor. My Englishmen, proud and warlike and true. Even John’s mother...’ he pinched my arm with a little forced jocularity, Dickon Broome again! ‘Ah, she was fair.’

And we were quiet, remembering.

‘Recount the rest,’ he said suddenly, and, glad to spare him their tender names, I muttered: ‘The most noble Queen Anne Neville, God strengthen her... Edward, Prince of Wales, whom Our Lady keep ever...’