We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (25 page)

George’s tongue was gold. This statement was a mingling of airy simplicity and innocent amazement. Richard kept silence under the King’s troubled gaze.

‘Well, sir?’ said Edward.

‘I’m of the opinion,’ said Richard with difficulty, ‘that she is concealed somewhere.’

Clarence laughed gently. ‘Likely, good brother,’ he murmured. ‘But ’tis naught to me. London is a great place, likewise York, or Canterbury or any other fair town. She is but a little maid,’ he mused.

He came over to me, where I still held the cards fanned out.

‘Let us play one game of hazard, Dickon,’ he said kindly, and under cover of his sleeve flicked up the cards for a lightning look. Richard stood mute, his hands behind his back. I could almost hear his thoughts, as the Countess of Warwick’s lands, so nearly gained, were slipping from his grasp.

‘Come!’ George said. ‘Won’t you tempt Dame Fortune? Draw a card, and see if the omens are good!’

Gloucester was silent.

‘Then I must play alone,’ sighed George, and with thumb and finger tweaked out a card. I knew what it was for I had placed them; so did he, for he had cheated. Richard’s face, when confronted by the Queen of Diamonds, betrayed little, and the jest went sour. He made an obeisance to the frowning King, and quit the room. The minstrels quietly gathered up their instruments.

‘Certes, I found a lady,’ murmured Clarence. ‘A grey-eyed lady for my noble brother, but he misliked her.’ I followed the tall prince in the wake of a soft French air that drifted from his lips and on the terrace waylaid him. There I showed him a little game—played with three walnut shells and a pea, and he achieved much skill with it, laughed for full five minutes, and gave me a mark.

Richard had gone, tight-lipped, down to the armoury, or I would have sought to please him with it too. Would I though? There was no humour in him, and I knew I would only be wasting my time.

*

Robert Hawkins played the shawm, John Green the lute, and exceptionally tuneful were they, in sounds both sacred and secular. Also they had another love, that being gambling. So, through my lord of Gloucester’s whim, I had a wager of two marks with John, and the price of a good pair of hose with Robert, and I would have had the stakes doubled had it not been for their cautiousness, so sure of victory was I.

‘My lord went down into Southwark two days ago,’ Robert said uneasily. ‘He took with him a train of henchmen, two knights and some fellows in jacks and sallets—while yesterday he was combing the ward of Bishopsgate and had an hour’s talk with the Prioress of St Mary Spital.’

I laughed merrily and measured my leg against his, for the new hose.

‘I will have them in green,’ I said. ‘And sure enough ’tis a fool that will place them on my feet. For does his Grace seek to find the lady all among the Bishop of Winchester’s geese?’

This was a time-honoured jest among us. Once, the bagnios that housed the whores over the river paid rent to the Bishop’s bailiffs, and brought him in a tidy sum.

‘Today he went alone, and on foot,’ said John. ‘With but two squires to guard him.’ He sighed. ‘Jesu! he loves her.’

‘There’s no such thing as love,’ I said. And I tried to believe it, for my own heart’s peace.

John took up his lute. His voice was pure, falsetto, silver, to set the hair on your head tingling.

‘Belle, qui tiens ma vie
Captive de tes yeux
Qui ma l’âme ravie
Ton souris gracieux.
Vientôt me secourir
Ou me faudra mourir.’

‘Pretty,’ said I. ‘But he will never find her. He may have slain her husband at Tewkesbury, but she’ll stay widowed if my lord of Clarence has half the wit...’

John rested his lute on his knee. ‘I never knew it was Gloucester that killed the French Queen’s son,’ he said, interested.

‘My cousin was in the battle’s thick,’ I boasted. ‘Were not the young princes rivals for Anne of Warwick?’

I embroidered, as Alexander Carlile had done, and my colours were even brighter than his. So is history made. Detail and truth both done to death for drama’s sake, with hard bright fact concealed under the pretty swirl of histrionics. I am no worse, no better. Others have done it. But so is truth butchered, for the sake of a song.

They hung on my words, and they composed a sad little tune.

‘His horse’s bardings—black with the gore of. the fallen.’

This I liked well, and should it be the lady’s husband’s blood, splashed up from Gloucester’s blade, an even more thrilling ballad could be fashioned. Unluckily for me, a few words of this lay (which smacked of unchivalry) crept to my cousin’s ears. He sent a boy to fetch me to where he was practising at the butts. I watched him admiringly as he drew his bow. Muscle the size of an orange blossomed under the fine hide of each sleeve. The thrum and swish of his dart caused the heads of the watching esquires to turn; against the cloudless sky it cleaved an arc, striking the target just south of the bull. My cousin swore softly, but I clapped hands and cried bravo. Anthony Rivers took up his turn, standing a good yard back from my cousin’s mark, and loosed a clean quill. Under the cries of acclaim, my cousin said softly: ‘So you deem yourself a chronicler, kinsman,’ and flashed his steel-grey eyes at me. I was a little put out and busied myself applauding Lord Stanley’s shot.

‘I’ve heard your account of Tewkesbury,’ he continued drily. ‘I knew naught of my little cousin’s war-lust. Mayhap I can arrange a battle for you to see all first-hand.’

The thought of fighting made me quake. ‘Sir, what have I said?’

‘Lies, tales of murder in the field,’ he growled.

So I stood on one leg and sang:

‘I saw a codfish corn sow,
And a worm a whistle blow,
And a pie treading a crow,
I will have the whetstone, and I may.’

‘Fool,’ he muttered.

‘Yea, ’tis my calling,’ said I.

‘You may yet have the whetstone,’ he said. ‘Hung about your neck for perjuring my account of a bloody battle nobly fought.’

‘I’ll do penance,’ I whined. Only last week I’d seen a convicted liar in the market-place, with folk sharpening their knives on the great stone around his throat.

‘Sit, then,’ he commanded. ‘I’ll tell you of Tewkesbury.’

So I sat, and the sun was hot, and I closed my eyes the better to hear his tale; and woke with a jump to a cool breeze and his voice, quieter now, saying: ‘Thus ended the House of Lancaster. Not, good friend, with silly tales of stabbings over a maid’s hand, but in dust, and heat, and honour.’

‘It’s a fine story,’ I said, blinking. He looked so sternly at me I wondered if he knew I’d been asleep. All he said was:

‘More credible than yours,’ and I answered meekly:

‘I will have the whetstone, kinsman,’ and left him. I had thought to mention Dan Fray and my mother, but I thought he might wax wroth at my clouting the nephew and risking a brawl, so I thought better of it and went to visit her myself.

The cookshop was hotter than ever. The smell of dead dinners clung to the buckram hangings of the kitchen-chamber and the rushes were greasy with fat-splashes. I leaned on one side of the fireplace until the cook, with a heavy politeness, told me I was in his way. So I retreated to watch all the diversities of cunning employed by the cook-knaves. One was preparing a venison frumenty; he had leched the meat into strips and had his wheaten soup made ready, to which he was adding egg yolks, salt and sugar. Another, more ambitious, struggled uneasily with a
fylettes en galantyne,
stirring chopped roast pork and onions into beef broth boiled with pepper, cinnamon, cloves and mace. Old Mary was grinding fresh brawn in a mortar. I watched her temper it with almond meats and strain the mess into an earthenware dish, boiling the mixture with sugar and cloves, thickening it with cinnamon and ginger. The near-solid mass took shape—a hare, was it? a hog? I was about to ask her, when my mother appeared, beckoning me from half-way up the stairs. In the upper room, I knew there had been trouble. Her face said it.

‘He’s been back,’ I murmured.

‘Yea, and none of your persuasions have swayed the uncle, for he came himself, and snared me in my own parlour, chasing me round the table. I was distressed enough to go say an Ave and a Pater at your father’s tomb, I who had his Month’s Mind kept all these past years.’

Rageful and sorely anxious, I said: ‘You should have married Butcher Gould. You know as well as I how widows are fair game. Even now ’tis not too late to get you to the Minories.’

‘Never!’ she cried. ‘I am not shaped for the cloister, and I’ll marry none. This’—she gestured around—‘is my all. ’Twill take more than Master Fray to drive me out.’

I gave her a moment to cool and she ran downstairs; she said she smelled burning and was anxious for a special order—a dozen eel-and-grape pies, coming to their peak. When she returned I asked: ‘Has his nephew’s pate healed yet? Tell me, that I may break it again.’

‘I feared for that, too. He talked of summonsing you for assault on the lad. He held this over me if I did not submit.’

‘I’m in his Grace’s service,’ I said wildly. Even so, I thought of John Davy, late favourite of the King, who had had his hand cut off for striking a man in front of King’s Bench at Westminster Hall. I saw myself fleeing again into Sanctuary, wading into the sea after my forty days’ grace crying: ‘Passage, for the love of God and King Edward!’ like any common felon. And the King would take unkindly to my fleeing the judgement of his Mayor—hiding beneath the clergy’s mantle. Then, with relief, I remembered that Fray, with a tavern full of whores in their striped rays and Lancastrian spies thick as roaches, would be ill-advised to seek a lawsuit. All ale-sellers were reckoned guilty; whatever the matter.

‘He would find no sympathy at the sessions, I’d dare my next feastday wage,’ I said. ‘We’ll have him for trespass—we’ll appeal to the Gild. He has been uttering threats against your person.’

An unwilling smile curved her mouth.

‘The Gild is not much concerned with personal matters,’ she murmured. ‘Anyway, he said that all he offered was an honourable proposal of marriage—no threat has passed his lips—he did but offer me protection.’

‘By God!’ I said sourly. ‘He is as cunning as Clarence! Naught to lay hold of, and in his ways as stubborn as a mule.’

She was instantly distracted.

‘Ah, poor young Gloucester!’ she said. ‘All the City watch for him daily. My boys were in Smithfield yesterday and saw him questioning the horse-copers. Billingsgate likewise, among the fish merchants. He has paid his respects to every Abbess in town. The lady Anne has vanished from human sight, and Gloucester’s like one of Arthur’s knights in search of the Grail.’

‘Cast in solid gold and weighty with gems,’ I remarked.

‘So!’ she said keenly. ‘Is there love?’

‘Barter,’ said I.

‘What of Clarence?’

I told her about the playing cards and she grimaced. ‘A bad jest,’ and then: ‘But I would not speak against Clarence outside these walls.’ She gestured, east.

‘Three doors down,’ she said. ‘Although they are under Duke George’s patronage, I mislike that woman. She whispered that I gave short weight in my mutton pasties and since Corpus Christi last our dealings have been few.’

She laughed at my indignation.

‘Put up your staff, before you break more heads. It will be a long while before they hang my pies about my neck on Cornhill. Words can’t hurt me when I know my merchandise is good.’

‘We have strayed,’ I said. ‘What had Fray to say finally?’

‘He gave me till Michaelmas for the banns to be cried. I told him the same answer, so he waved his plaguey deeds of title before my face. I said he would have to bring this before the justices of this ward and the courts are jammed with suits. We shall have a few months’ breathing space.’

‘But you can’t go on like this!’ I cried. ‘Tell him to go to the Devil!’

She squared her shoulders. ‘That was my last injunction. I’ll take what he brings, and I’ll best him.’ I leaped from the table and embraced her.

‘If there’s trouble...’

‘Can I call on you?’ she said timidly.

‘Yes, ask Butcher Gould to send a boy to the Palace—the King thinks much of him since he succoured Elizabeth in Sanctuary. They’ll give a message.’

‘Only if there’s real mischief.’

‘I shall come straightway.’ To end a disquieting hour with jesting, I told her of my wager, and bade her commend me to her silkmaid at Michaelmas to make me a costly new hose; that is, if the Duke of Gloucester had not found his lady by then.

I walked down Eastchepe into the widening strip of Candlewick Street with its lines of mercers’ and drapers’ shops displaying rich cloth; then, because I had time to spare, strolled up Tower Street. I stopped for a swift mazer of ale in the Boar’s Head. Sir John Howard was there, entertaining strangers; I made way with full courtesy, and the commonalty in turn fell back for me. The crenellated turrets of the Tower stood stark against the haze of the September afternoon. Within that building I had often entertained the King. My mind turned idly to the woman who doubtless now paced up and down behind one of those faraway slits in the great white fortress. Margaret of Anjou: I’d heard that her hair had turned grey from the loss of her son. I wondered if she wept, too, for old Harry. And Somerset—Beaufort had been her last link with a dead love; men said his father, the old Earl, had bedded with the French Queen. Like Owen Tudor and Queen Katherine.

Thinking of the slain Prince, I thought again of Anne Neville, Richard Gloucester, and the wager. I had given John and Robert until Michaelmas, and knew my money safe. He would never find her. Idly I wondered where she was, and decided she had got herself out of England—but to whom? In my mind I saw her little, childish face, blonde-framed. I had seen it often at court before the rift with Warwick; to deem her friendless made me rather sad.

That evening I brought a goat into the Hall and made a parody of John Lydgate’s ‘Little Short Ditty against Horns’, I dressed the beast in a hennin filched from a Flemish dancing maid, and there was much mirth and not a few red faces under the extravagant headgear of the court ladies. I plied my craft with gusto and genuine feeling—I have thought it a shame to conceal a woman’s hair, her fairest possession—and when I plucked out a few hairs from the goat’s brow, aping a tiring wench, and caused it to bleat and butt me in the nether end—the company laughed like demons. Therefore one did not heed the few glum and abstracted persons who sat, toying with their trenchers and staring into air. Richard Gloucester was one of these. He had come in late, a little footsore I swear and glad to be seated, his face worn and weary and unsmiling. My own magical powers took hold of me and I half-killed myself trying to make him laugh, but to no avail. By the end of the entertainment I had the strangest feeling of kinship with him. For I, too, had wandered many weeks in search of my love, and I remembered how people had chaffed me. This feeling grew stronger until I reminded myself of Gloucester’s motives; I drew a callous skin over my soul and thought of how Anne Neville, if she remained hidden, would make of me a fashionable man.