We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (26 page)

Neither did the Queen smile. When the Maiden was at court, we would talk of Elizabeth—I got some sly kind of sport from the days of Grafton Regis, when food was sparse and the rod heavy on my poor sweeting’s back. King Edward’s wooing—ah, God! that sweet, innocent conversation:

‘Lady Grey went for a walk in Whittlebury Forest and was nearly run down by the King’s horse.’

Marry, what would Lady Grey expect? Everyone knew that Whittlebury was a royal chase. If that were an accident that she were there on that day, holding a fatherless boy by each hand under the Queen’s Oak, then I had six toes on either foot. All sorrowful beauty would she be, suing piteously for the restoration of Bradgate, her children’s inheritance. They had been dispossessed following the defeat of Lancaster at St Alban’s. Sir John Grey had been knighted by Mad Harry at Colney in the spring of 1461, but had died of his wounds shortly afterwards. No wonder food was short at Grafton; Elizabeth Woodville had been near destitution. Fortune smiles on the fair. And the not so fair. As early as 1461 the King had affectionately considered the benefit of Jacquetta Duchess of Bedford, his cozen’s mother. He paid her an annual stipend of 300 marks—and 100 livres in advance. Lust makes fools of all. Even Kings.

I bowed low before the royal pair, and the goat got loose and bolted round the hall, sweeping a tablecloth off with its horns. The Master of the Revels made a note in his book and looked at me, and I gave him obeisance.

In the space between the end of dinner, and supper at four, John, Robert and I, and others employed in the sweet pursuit of do-naught, would gather near the entry to Westminster Hall. There we would watch the world and his wife, and some exceeding pretty wives there were, in truth. We stood under the Clock House, and as the last deep note throbbed and burgeoned and died (and we waited for our hearing to return) Lady Elizabeth Lucey rode out from the Palace on a splendid bay. Green velvet she wore, and her headgear was almost as high as the Clochard spire with its three giant bells which, men said, soured all the drink in the town. John affected a swoon at sight of the lady. Robert said, soft and knowing:

‘His Grace had me make music for that sweet face in his inner chamber.’

We trusted one another. I said: ‘Love songs, I doubt not.’

He nodded. ‘Well, the Queen had the costliest new device. Italianate silverwork collar and baubles for her ears—a fair bargain.’

‘Riches or love, which would you?’ asked Robert. I thought of Gloucester and shrugged, saying: ‘’Tis all the same, it seems.’

None could resist the King; I reckoned no surprise at it, so beautiful a person was he, and for the sheer pleasure of the words on my tongue, I quoted gently:

‘Now is the Rose of Rouen grown to great honour
Therefore sing we every one blessed be that flower
I warn ye every one that he shall understand
There sprang a Rose in Rouen that spread to England
Had not the Rose of Rouen been, all England had been dour,
Y-blessed be the time God ever spread that flower.’

So we sang Edward’s Coronation song, and continued to watch: the serjeants of the Crown in their silken hoods and the lawyers in long gowns of striped ray hurrying in and out the door of the great Hall of Westminster; jammed with suits, as my mother had said, like any other City Court. That splendid building was erected by King William the Red, and rebuilt in magnificence by Richard of Bordeaux; whose wife was Anne. The fellow Gloucester was on my mind again, and I shook him off like a flea. There were comings and goings from the Hall; above was the Court of Chancery, and the busy Exchequer and Star Chamber, womb of many stern laws. The Court of Common Pleas too lay within, and King’s Bench, where Edward had sat for three days together at the start of his reign. All about milled the plaintiffs and defendants, the suitors and witnesses, the red robes of aldermen mingling with the commonalty’s poor worsted. Flemings, in the sad-coloured smocks and hanging liripipes hawked pins and spectacles and fine felt hats, while nearby an amateur fiddler scraped a hideous noise for groats. Fierce-eyed cook-knaves, their manners more thrusting even than in Eastchepe, blustered of fine fare at the gate, clutching at hastening lawyers with their cries. Wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

Barefoot, travel-seamed, in a dusty-grey habit, a Franciscan touched my sleeve. He gave me a blessing. ‘Sir, I seek the London lodging of my house.’

‘You’ll hear the Jesus bells of St Paul’s, Father,’ I told him. ‘North of Paul on Newgate you’ll find your church and cloister.’

‘And the library?’ His weary eyes lit up. ‘That which the Sun of Marchandy, Sir Richard Whittington, so generously endowed?’

I nodded. ‘You’ve travelled far?’

‘From Norwich.’ He fingered his wooden crucifix. ‘God’s mercy on all there.’

I heard the inrush of breath behind me.

‘Plague,’ I said softly... He smiled wanly as John and Robert shrank from him.

‘Fear naught,’ he murmured. ‘Weeks I lay, my bones dissolving to water, but the Lord spared me. I am whole again.’

I felt for a coin—he was not importunate, and it was luck to fill his wooden bowl. ‘God be good to your house,’ I said.

A slender dark shadow fell across us. I looked into the face of the Duke of Gloucester and saw it to be weary and grim with a look of restless days and nights. The Franciscan’s bowl was still extended and Richard dropped a gold piece and bowed his head briefly, passing on. The friar looked after him wistfully.

‘Benedicite,’
he whispered.

‘His Grace of Gloucester,’ I told him.

‘I have seen him before, my son,’ he said gently. ‘Two years ago, before all the troubles in this realm, be came to Our Lady of Walsingham with the King. I spoke with him then, though he could not have remembered me.’

But he had remembered him, I thought. As the friar blessed us and moved away, I wondered deeply. What manner of man was Richard? There was no doubt in my mind: after two years, he had given recognition to an impoverished and anonymous friar. For some reason I began to feel much incensed. I heard the others whispering.

‘He should not have come to London,’ Robert said grimly. ‘Death can be carried—by God, I didn’t know they had plague in Norwich.’

‘Nor I,’ whispered John, all jelly-trembling.

‘You should wear the bezoar stone,’ I said, laughing again, and I fingered my talisman, smooth and round within my pouch. While I jested and saw their courage returning, I felt cold, thinking of the sudden crippling dizziness that assailed a man even in the ale-house; the orange-sized hard swelling in the armpit, the black vomit, the fires of Hell...

So I comforted them.

‘Carpe diem,
’ Robert said: ‘When his Grace sent us to play at Bungay six weeks gone, I heard no talk of plague at Norwich, for I and the King’s bearward were only speaking of sickness.’

‘They had no plague in Norwich,’ said John, ‘since August five years past, when hundreds died. Mistress Paston’s household left town for fear of it.’

‘One case,’ Robert argued. ‘The Lady Eleanor Butler. She died in the house of the Carmelites three years ago.’

‘That was not the plague,’ John insisted. ‘At first they thought it lung fever—but she died bewitched—no prayers or simples could aid her. They said she courted death, and went willingly.’

‘What talk for a fine day!’ I cried. ‘Pestilence, and tombs, and white faces, and my lord of Gloucester wandering the streets like a walking curse. All be merry, as I!’ and I snatched a pair of spectacles from a Flemish pedlar, donned them and, blinded instantly, walked smack into a wall.

‘Patch, I mislike this wager of ours,’ said Robert.

‘So you’d withdraw,’ I said. ‘You have not the wherewithal to pay me when I win.’

‘Nay,’ said Robert. He thought it too sorry a matter for gambling on. The Lady Anne was the Lord knew where, and her mother, Countess of Warwick, was in durance in the Sanctuary of Beaulieu, and it was, in effect, her money we were gaming on.

‘She has petitioned the Commons that she has never done aught to offend the King; she has sought safe-conduct in vain, all her estates being forfeit. She has written most piteously to the Queen’s Grace, the Duchess of York, the King’s daughters, and the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, all in her own hand in the absence of clerks. She tells of great affection between herself and her daughter Anne, and craves her whereabouts. What we are about seems knavish,’ he said lamely.

‘God’s Passion!’ I cried. ‘What harm can it do?’ John looked down, and shuffled his feet.

‘I too,’ he said. ‘Last night I sang a song, and incurred my lord of Gloucester’s displeasure, for he looked at me with a most terrible look.’

He raised his pure boy’s voice and sang a dolorous French song so beautiful it made me want to howl like a wolf. People passing smiled with joy.

‘Sing it in English,’ I said. ‘I thought you attended the
scholae minstrallorum
in Paris—yet your accent mazes me utterly.’

He reddened. ‘I had ado with many Southerners,’ he said.

‘Alas, of you I should indeed complain
If it please you not that I see you again
My love, who has my soul enchained.
For without I see you wherever I be
All I behold displeases me
Nor, until then, shall I sated be.’

He spoke the words.

‘It loses pith in the translation.’

I thought of the Maiden, and the sun went behind a cloud.

Butcher Gould’s ’prentice rode a sweating palfrey, and the beast was nearly done. He had ridden hard to Westminster Palace, nearly a league’s distance, and was short of breath himself, while the horse, its sides pumping in and out, stood making water on the cobbles outside the Palace gate, a thing forbidden in the meanest streets. I had thrown my cloak on inside out in my frenzy, and was clad in my worst suiting, for I had that evening been in rehearsal—trying out the dramatization of Ovid’s
Art of Love,
with many effects
ad libitum,
and I had no mind for ruining good clothes by rolling on the floor with Flemish Jeane, so ill-prepared for a night’s foray was I. I had not yet dared ask the boy what kind of trouble was afoot—the one gasped word was enough.

I had been bedwards and on my way to the panterer’s to get my bread and ale and candle-ends when the message came. The King was sitting late in Council; there had been no entertainment. The gateman grumbled as he let me out, but he had that very day taken two shillings from me at dice so I clattered unrebuked on my mare into the September night to where Gould’s boy waited. Together we rode in the direction of the Strand. There was a last gleam in the sky as we reached Temple Bar, but the serjeant closed the gate behind us and I was fast in the City for the night. So be it, I thought. If she needs me, I will risk reprimand. Our horses’ hooves crashed on the cobbles in a dangerous, slippery ride. Few people were abroad; only the cressets of the Watch flickering on the edge of Candlewick Street, and the occasional ragged bundle in the gutter, groaning under a hunger-dream. Few people; that is, until we came into Eastchepe and saw a fair crowd. Then I knew, with sinking belly, what kind of mischief this was. The most dread enemy, after plague. Outside my mother’s shop I threw my reins to one of the gawping crowd and ran into the fierce light of flames that feasted on dry timber, chuckled over greasy rushes, and roared approval as they fed.

My mother was wondrous calm. She was marshalling affairs, standing at the head of the line, swinging each bucket of water as it came to her hand through the blazing cookshop window. It looked as if the fire had been started just within, under the sill, and the frame was already destroyed. Now and then loose slivers of glass crashed to the ground. The lintel of the doorpost had caught. I seized a bucket, just as the cart drawn by two unquiet horses ground to a halt on iron wheels. ‘Good man!’ I cried to the driver, and filled my bucket from the slopping barrels aboard the wain. Others, silent and grimed, bent alongside me. Mistress Petson, shameless in her bedwrap, her long grey hair flying, stood wringing her hands, and I yelled to her to come fill a pail, but she seemed to have lost her reason. The frightened horses backed and plunged, so that the water barrels overflowed. Great wet patches flowed on to the cobbles, blood-red from the fire’s reflection. The neighbours worked tirelessly—a swing, a splash, a deafening hiss as water fought flame. Yet the fire grew. I looked up to see the latten sign above the doorway bending in the heat, the whole square of metal drooping like a defeated banner, the gay colours blackening. A great terrible rage took hold of me. I fought my way to my mother’s side.

‘This is devil’s work!’

‘Not the devil, but his henchman.’ She swung her bucket—the fire spat mockingly. I looked hard into a leaping flame and wished I saw Fray’s tortured face in its midst. ‘He warned me,’ she gasped. ‘God’s curse on him.’

The barrels were empty again. With painful sloth, the wagon turned in the narrow street and made for the conduit in lumbering haste. But all the while the fire raged madly. All around were anxious faces.

‘The whole street will go,’ I heard.

‘Yea, by cock!’

‘Mother of God, how slow it is!’ And two or three ran up the street to meet the approaching cart, filling their pails before the terrified horses had halted, racing back to cast the pitifully small streams of water through the roaring doorway. Someone had foreseen to save divers belongings: I saw the arras hastily rolled and leaning against the wall. The knights still hawked upon it, the grapes still bloomed. My mother’s little chestnut coffer sat impassively on the cobbles.

The cookboys were doing their best, and I joined them in beating at the flames with strips of buckram torn from the walls. One of them, Walter Cleeve, whom I had ever thought half-wit, was worse than useless. In fact, when the rats, disturbed by the heat, started to run out of the doorway in dark, firelit streaks, he set his terrier on them, crying: ‘Sa, sa, cy, avaunt, sohow!’ like a lord in King Edward’s otter-chase. I turned and dealt him a great buffet, and shoved a pail in his hand, just as the night Watch arrived, sternly demanding that firehooks be used. My mother pleaded with them.