We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (8 page)

‘Do not fear the fire,’ he said. I gripped the ringless hand. ‘I am ready,’ I whispered. I should have marked his look, for it was the same that he had worn at Rising, when I had spoken of the King’s folly, and then through ignorance, not wine. He bent his wrist, a little, gentle pressure. He was so slender. I would go softly at first and release his hand ere it touched the flame. One does not burn a royal Duke.

‘Montagu was wrong,’ he said, as a strange pain was born in my wrist. ‘Once, he was loyal. Now, he wreaks treason on his Grace. Warwick—likewise. Clarence—ever. Gloucester—never. How strange are the hearts of men!’

He was steel and rock. I felt gouts of sweat in my oxters, my neck. God! he was using his left hand—what must his right hand be like? I felt the pain, effort straining at my throat, deep in my belly I caught the drag of his unassailable strength, hearing sinew and muscle shrieking for release. The little flame burned nearer—he held my hand over it and my eyes within his own wise, melancholy gaze. I struggled to raise my arm, watching the vein wax full on his brow, then tasted fire with the back of my hand, and our mingling sweat hissed in the flame. He held me, and I began to burn.

‘Swear your loyalty,’ he said quickly.

‘Under duress, my lord?’ I gasped.

He released me instantly and rose, turning away, while I sucked at the forming blister. A mark like an arrow head. When he looked back his face was ravaged. ‘I have used you ill,’ he said. ‘Grant me pardon,’ and took my hand again, looking at the burgeoning mark. ‘Remember me,’ he said. ‘Think on me by this brand. But above all, his Grace. It is men like you whom he needs. Men who will fight and die for that great Prince.’

I went on my knee, wept, told him of Margetta. He listened, as a father might.

‘Well, Mark Eye,’ he said, and touched my hanap with his. ‘What shall be our toast, now?’

‘His Grace King Edward.’

‘York, and Plantagenet.’

‘Victory, or death, your Grace.’

‘St George for England.’

He was silent, briefly. ‘We are exiles—equal in exile,’ he said. ‘Call me Dickon.’

And it was then that the chamber door opened rudely to admit two of the fairest ladies I had ever seen, and one had eyes grey as glass, like Margetta. They were in a demanding humour, saying that the room was theirs that evening for private conversation; and who, for the love of St Catherine, were we, pray?

Were these, I thought, gaping, the women of Bruges, of the same that had buffeted Sir John Paston with their strong whorish love? I had thought to find them bold-featured, with that thrusting hip-swing which fed guffaws in the stews of Southwark, but these were delicate, fair. There was not a penny’s grace to choose betwixt the two, although they were unalike, and calling one another ‘cousin’ in the prettiest fractured English, for our benefit.

The tavern-keeper came crawling up the stairs like a sea-slug, all flurried, not knowing which party to offend: his own countrywomen, or two high-flying English gentlemen with gold sound to the bite.

‘
Pardon, mille fois
,’ he creaked, but I could not tell whom he addressed, and he was not sure.

The tall woman, with the eyes like holy Madame Eglentyne in Chaucer’s Tale, loosed a pack of fast gibberish at him, meant to be scolding, no doubt of it. Yet her voice itself was so douce in timbre that it robbed her speech of all harshness. And her red mouth was wide, her brows the very shape of a sweet easy bow, set close over the lids and tapering off at each outer end; while her breasts were trussed up high so that the long throat merged into an arrow of darkness at the edge of her bodice. As to her companion, her cousin, her butty (as I would have named her had they been men and we shooting in a bow—a vulgar, and an apt, comparison!) why, she was a little sugarplum creature. Pale, with cast-down eyes; grey eyes too, but not the snapping sea-black wind-sucked grey of the tall damsel (for in her real or feigned anger at the landlord I watched those eyes change and saw Margetta in them, which made me sadly happy). Nay, the little one had the colour of sunlight through rabbit’s fur between her white lids, and that rabbit hopped almost unseen from Dickon to me, from me to Dickon, and vanished in a faint, downward smile.

‘Mesdames, we will withdraw,’ said my lord, to my momentary surprise, as I had forgotten he was still playing Prince ’Prentice.

‘
Mijn Got
!’ said the tall wench. ‘Jehan, I cannot believe you would play us false. When you said there were English merchants aloft, I thought it a jest.
Sainte Vierge
, how the blond one stares!’ I glanced away in haste, feeling hot all over.

‘Go to, go to,’ said the landlord unhappily. ‘Sirs, I have taken your gold. The fault is mine,’ and he looked as if he wished we would all vanish into mist.

Dickon drained his wine, bowed slightly.

‘Beauty commands. Mesdames, the room is yours,’ he said, very gallant.

‘The chamber is large enough for four,’ said I. The wine still owned a small voice. ‘We shall be deaf to your secrets.’

Richard let his cloak, raised in readiness for departing, slide from one shoulder.

‘Blind to your whispers,’ he said.

‘Fie! Unchaperoned!’ cried the tall one, and her look mocked me. The little one spoke at last.

‘Cousin, these are English gentlemen,’ she said sweetly. ‘See’—she stretched out an ankle tiny and round as a willow stem—‘do we not wear fine English cloth?’ revealing the hem of a broidered kirtle. ‘Yesterday I saw the King Edward. He is in manner and person comely enough for a god. For his sake alone I will gladly take wine with Englishmen!’ With that, she sat down, opposite Dickon, and fixed her pointed chin in her hands, and Lord! if I had been accused of staring, she was my master by a league, for she commenced to devour Gloucester with her eyes, from the crown of his hair, to his mouth, and his hands, and back again, while he returned her look with calm amusement.

This has all been forecast, I thought wildly, as the tall woman seated herself. Margetta, I would that those long white hands which lie so close to mine along the table were yours. For comfort then, I went swimming in the sea-grey eyes and watched them wax full in darkness, and felt my lord of Gloucester’s shoulder, nay,
Dickon’s
shoulder, press lightly against me in companionship, and I tasted the cup... and I was happy, and sad.

‘What do you trade in?’ asked my lady.

‘Wool,’ said I.

‘Weapons,’ said Dickon, and we sucked in our breath on laughter that threatened to consume us both, and I began ‘My lord...’ and felt his shoulder nudge me so hard that I flew higher than ever with delight and had to take a great draught to stop it bursting forth.

‘It is bad, this war in England?’ asked the small woman.

‘All will be well,’ I said, as Gloucester did not answer.

‘My sister wrote me from Angers,’ said the tall one, ‘how Queen Margaret’s son was wedded to Lord Warwick’s daughter.’ She had some difficulty with the Neville’s name and it emerged as ‘War-weak’. I felt a slight shuddering begin in Dickon’s body, as she talked on. ‘King Louis had the Frenchwoman and the Earl swear by True Cross to keep their faith.’

‘It was an evil work,’ I said, empty-handed for a stronger retort.

‘I would not sell
my
daughter for a crown,’ said the tall one artlessly. ‘Tell me, sir’—this time to me—‘is it true that in England they do not marry for love?’

‘Sometimes they do,’ I murmured, being sucked deep into Margetta’s eyes. ‘Men say the French prince is fierce, like a wolf,’ she mused.

The small one made a soft angry noise. She was acute, that little wench. Her gaze never left the face of my lord, not for one instant.

‘All will be well,’ I said again, like an idiot.

The little woman slid the goblet towards Dickon. ‘Drink,’ she said, more motherly than natural for twenty or thereabouts; she is no virgin, I thought. She is cognizant with the humours of men, gay and lusty and sorrowful within the space of moments.

‘We have but the one vessel,’ said he, taking the hand that held it. I felt a pressure under the table. The woman who owned Margetta’s eyes were closing upon me like a huntress. Her ankle rubbed mine, as if she stroked a dog.

‘Then we must have a loving-cup!’ she said, with great merriment; she stretched that long white neck to the brimming draught, raised her face and smiled at me. Her eyes were whirlpools. Droplets clung redly to her lips. My vile body swam out of control. I gulped down wine, lusting to have her. Her mouth an inch away, she said calmly: ‘Jehan has been watering the drink. Sir, can you sing?’

Madame, if my guess is right ’tis no lullably you would hear. And at this time I could not raise a whistle. ‘My lord sings better than I,’ said I, forgetting.

‘Why do you call him thus?’ she murmured, and looked at Gloucester. The small face opposite his had chased away his frown. He smiled. She chattered. He held her hand still.

My lady rose, tall, high-breasted and took a viol from above the chimney piece. ‘
Mijn Got
, they are dull company,’ she sighed mockingly. ‘I am left with the entertainment!’ So she undid me finally with her singing. She sang the celebrated ‘
J’ai pris amours
’; next a little lay so bawdy that it could not be fitly construed into English; then, her great pride accompanied her in a true song of England:

‘...I will you take, and lady make,

As shortly as I can:

Thus have you won an Earles son

And not a banished man.’

It was
The Nut-Brown Maid
, with its many verses, and such a mocking air that I knew her undeceived by our counterfeit guise, and at this I sprang up regardless of the other two deep in their soft converse, and calling her ‘Eve’ and ‘temptress’, I held the wine to her lips and my mouth to her breast for an instant before she leaped away, calling for her ‘cousin’. Margetta, Margetta, where were you then?

‘Sirs, we wish you a good night,’ said the witch of Bruges, near the doorway.

‘I’ll stay,’ said the little one, her eyes on Richard.

‘Tell me,’ murmured my undoing, as I spun her cloak about her, longing to remove that high cap. ‘Tell me, Sir, of your friend. Is he not the Duke of Gloucester?’

I nodded, casting back to where Dickon sat, calm and comfortable and light, while my lady flitted across to her ‘cousin’, bidding her good evening with a kiss, and a trifle of whispering, which I did not heed and cared naught for.

Margetta was not with me as I hurried after the woman of Bruges, whose tall shadow tripped ahead like a banshee, I cajoling and she laughing and headshaking all the while... and Margetta was not with me in the mad-breathing darkness of the passage when I caught that woman and bent her over my arm; and she struck me a great blow amidships with her slender thigh, and I knew then what Sir John meant.

It was Margetta whom I betrayed that night, yet, strangely, Margetta who lay with me; and fumbling in dawn’s twilight for my clothing I heard my bedmate say, even while she stretched to detain me, like Potiphar’s wife... ‘Heart’s joy, you are very forgetful.’

‘Why for?’ I said, mazed by the stirrings of shame.

‘My name is Anneke... all night you called me otherwise.’

(God preserve me, I shot better than ever the following day. I had heard that bedsport improved a man’s marksmanship, and had dismissed this as all fable and nonsense. Yet it is true.)

Yea. I betrayed Margetta. I have said my
culpa
for that, but the night stayed with me for years. Not for that strong supple body, and the alien delights showered upon me. Not for the wine, the laughter or the music. But for the fact that I sat shoulder by shoulder with Dickon of Gloucester, as equals in exile, and we shared the follies that plague and enchant all young men.

When I saw him some days after, he gave me one look only, sufficient to declare that which needed no speech; thus we both knew what had passed between us two, and the women of Bruges.

My tongue is a dry stick in my mouth. Here in Leicester Gaol, we, the privileged traitors, have to ourselves a cell which stinks of past fear, and pride, and piss, and death. Here, thought rides me like a nighthag. There are pauses in the hammering without, for building a scaffold is thirsty work. I have lately seen a skull cleft as an apple and the bursting brains spattered upon the outer wall not far from my face. And all that my mind told me was: ‘He was one of Norfolk’s men, and Norfolk is dead.’ So, oddly, it was fitting that he should fall in flight. I am filled with envy; beside my destiny and doom this hasty ending was honourable. Ah, Tacitus, how could you foresee such circumstance as mine? And Tacitus wrestles, in answer, with Saul’s armour-bearer, who fell upon his sword.

The chaplain has gone. I think he was one of Morton’s priests. Yet, none the less, I saw him only as a man of God and loosed my sin-sorrow into his pale hands. Despite my dear lord’s words to us all, I am of a mind he would not wish me to pawn my own soul. For there are other sins than those of slaying my fellows... acts born of impulse and folly and the unwitting devil which led me once. My tongue is a sere bough betwixt my lips. Would that it had been torn out long ago. It would have been kindness. The mischief it has bred. Yet I was one among many. Many. I lave myself with possets of this vain comfort, as William Brecher kneels beside his son who has broken at last. He lies in the straw, a boy, a child, his broad placid face like stone, yet stone which the masons have attacked with chisel ill-tempered; his flesh is cloven into a thousand little lines of despair. He has shoulders like a bull, for all his youth, and on the death-day I watched them rise and fall, to deliver great buffeting blows with club and bill and maul; and at one moment he seized the giant Brandon’s bloody sword from his dead hand and struck down a Breton knight with such puissance and skill, bringing the gore bursting from his shattered hauberk in bright clustering gouts. I thought then: He should surely be knighted for this work. Soon now he will feel the hemp, and not the steel, about those mighty shoulders. I will give him such consolation as I can.