We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (3 page)

‘Lord!’ mourned the nurse. ‘Dame Grey sets great store by those young knaves. But my lady Jacquetta loves her cat equally. Should I go down and chide them, I wonder?’

She looked at me stupidly; she was a stupid woman. Often she berated me, often she sought my counsel. The cat whimpered and squalled. Dick sat down heavily astride its twitching back.

‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘They’ll be killing it soon.’ Her protests floated after me down the stairs.

It was a good excuse to escape her vigilant eyes. At any moment she would find me another piece of tiresome labour and I was weary from a morning laundering Dame Grey’s delicate linen. My hands looked red and would have been redder still save for the application of rose-water cream filched from my lady’s vial. (I think that was my only dishonesty. I always salved my conscience with the thought that, as she used it so lavishly, she must have a little to spare for those more needy.) In any event I misliked to see animals maltreated.

It was warm in the garden among the sheltering yews. Patches of violets edged the lawn. Like wicked frogs, Thomas and Dick grinned up at me. I rescued the struggling cat and smoothed its fur. Maddened to ingratitude, it sought to nip me.

‘Poor Gyb is not a horse,’ I said sternly.

‘In faith, he did not mind being ridden,’ little Dick argued, sucking a scratched wrist.

‘Set up the quintain again,’ I said.

Thomas heaved a great sigh. ‘I am aweary of that game.’ He gave me his sly smile. ‘Play Hoodman Blind! You never play with us now!’

Summoning my new dignity, I said: ‘Well, I’m a child no longer, sirs,’ and was glad of it. Their play was rough, and sometimes they would treat me with a thin contempt, aping great lords. Once, Tom, in temper, had reminded me that my father had been but a landless knight. Now, at twelve, I was a woman, and the gulf between was almost absolute, but on that occasion I had been a crying child, reminding them that that same landless knight had died of wounds taken in the Lancastrian cause and the service of their own grandsire, Sir Richard Woodville.

‘Put on your clothes,’ I told them. ‘You’re wanton. Dick, get dressed.’

‘I have no bonnet,’ .he said, grinning. ‘Lend me yours, lady.’ Swift as a bat, he seized my dangling veil. My short black hennin with its tarnished gold braid was tweaked from my head, and my hair fell down, a life-time’s heavy growth. It covered me like a cloak; the sun felt unfamiliar on my brow

‘Wanton! Wanton!’ mimicked Thomas, and they were off, flat-footedly racing, bearing my bonnet like a battle trophy. I was left with the echo of their floating laughter, and the slitted eyes of the cat, watching. It dabbed its coat with a quick tongue, then gazed at me again. Small boys were cruel, yet I felt a strange distaste for this particular beast, and marvelled that Jacquetta of Bedford should love it so. It slept in her bed all night. Its eyes were lines of amber, that looked on me with hate. Suddenly I clapped my hands.

‘Shoo! Cursed Gyb!’

I know not why I called it cursed. It skipped, arching, behind the hedge. I walked on slowly. For a brief space I was free. At any time my mistress might return from her ride but, until then, I was at large to peek and glimpse, with fortune, a real royal courier. I tried to braid my hair. I loved my hair; it was long as Dame Grey’s, and thicker, but a strange colour, seen by few, kept as it was in a great coil under my little blunt-pointed hat. Think of a fox, a chestnut, the setting sun on wine, a dying leaf. Those were the colours of my hair, and many more besides. I gave up trying to plait—it was too thick. I twisted it in a knot; it poured sleekly through my fingers like molten metal. I let it hang, and it waved and lifted about me as I walked, like the blown garment of an autumn tree.

I stepped into the kitchen and there was the courier. A courier off duty, by my faith, for he lay comfortably in a chair by the hearth, with its dusty andirons and smouldering peat, his boots extended to the warmth, while fat Agace, the cook, filled his tankard from the day’s brewing. The blazing rose of York shone from his garment. He was laughing and, though he was past his youth, being at least eight-and-twenty, I thought him well-favoured; he lacked no teeth and his eye had an easy glint. He looked up when I entered, a little cautiously, as if unsure of whom he was about to see. Then he rose; he bowed. I found delight in that courtly bow. Agace, however, bustled over to me, proud and as insolent as she dared, full of outraged whispers. This was her kingdom, the scullions her subjects, my disarray her great displeasure.

‘Bind your hair, mistress!’ she growled. ‘What will the gentleman think of us? My lady out riding, and you strutting like a wanton quean!’

The esquire caught her last words. He could scarcely help it. He said gently:

‘Nay, nay, good cook. Like... a bride, I fancy. Yea, a bride.’

I felt the warm wash of pleasure. The dim kitchen seemed to glow.

‘John Skelton, mistress,’ he said, bowing again. ‘At the service of Lady Grey’s fair daughter, of whose existence I vow I did not know.’

Here was confusion. He had called me fair; yet Lady Grey had no daughter. I opened my mouth, foolishly, and heard Agace swiftly acquainting him of my life’s history in one pompous breath. The kitchen was ordinary once more. I looked up at him, sadly spreading my hands. I was the child of charity, and fair no longer. Here the game must end.

‘There you have my story, sir,’ I said. ‘Save that’—with an angry look at Agace—‘my father was knighted ere he died.’

But he only smiled, gently. ‘A tale of honourable misfortune,’ he said. Then, half to himself: ‘Mother of God, what a colour!’

He was gazing at my hair. I was little, I was unimportant, but he found me pleasant to look upon. I closed my ears to the scullions’ giggling, and to Agace’s disapproving sniff. I smiled into John Skelton’s eyes, straightening my back. I liked the way he looked at me, though there was something oddly disturbing in it. Like finding a new, mysterious plant, lovely but unknown, in the herb garden.

‘I have been in Calais, in Burgundy,’ he said softly. ‘Never did I see its like. By my soul, the Flemish artists would lose their wits over that hair. They would go mad while they mixed their paints. What is it? A bay horse’s hide has it, and a beech leaf, but there’s pure gold there, and red fire. Come to the light, child, that I may judge it better.’ He drew me to the window.

Behind me, I heard Agace say, low-voiced: ‘Court flattery. Certes, a right courtier!’

One of the stable-boys lurched in through the open door.

‘Horse is ready, master,’ he muttered. His tatters were shown up cruelly by John Skelton’s bright robes. I went with him to the stable, while the boy slouched ahead, kicking pebbles. We walked through the herb garden, and I feigned in secret that the esquire was my leman, begging me to yield at dagger point. But he was old enough to have fathered me. I kept eyes downcast, as Elizabeth did.

‘Are you betrothed?’ he asked. I shook my head. My face must have expressed some hidden shame, for he tipped up my chin with a kindly finger.

‘But you’re still young,’ he said. ‘That hair! It would be shame to hide that hair in cloister.’

My spirit drooped. I thought, yes, a nunnery! The only alternative. Having no husband, to be exalted to Christ’s Bride. What better fate? But he had called me fair.

‘When Dame Grey comes to court,’ he went on, ‘I doubt not she will bring you also, and her other maidens to attend her.’

I stopped dead in the middle of the lawn. Even the trees held their breath, and the flowers.

‘She is to go to court?’ I whispered. And then, forgetting all warnings, said loudly: ‘How her lover will miss her! Oh, Master Skelton, he’s the handsomest man in the world.’

Now it was his turn to stop. He caught my hand and held it tight.

‘Jesu,’ he said quietly. ‘She has a lover? What is his name?’

I described him, babbling of his beauty. I said his name was Ned, and that was all I knew. I never saw a man laugh so lustily as did John Skelton then. He clasped his own waist and leaned this way and that. I said stiffly:

‘I think you mock me, sir. You asked, I answered. Now, is it true my lady is for London?’

He ceased laughing, and gave me the strangest look, saying quickly: ‘Nay, put it from your mind absolutely. I did jest with you indeed. Forgive me.’

Being very cross, I grew even more polite than usual. Looking straight ahead, I asked him:

‘You say that you have been abroad? Tell me of the fashions, if you please. I hear that in France and in Burgundy ladies no longer wear the tall hennin but a little cone-shaped hat, trimmed at the crown with braid. Is this but another rumour?’

He said again, very humbly: ‘Forgive me. Yes, I have been to France, where the ladies can’t hold a candle to our English maids, but I fear I’ve no eye for fashion. And as for Burgundy… by God! My last voyage there still gives me bad dreams. The most important commission of my life. And the most dangerous.’

His voice told me that this subject held neither flattery nor false rumour. His eyes were far-off, grey as the sea.

I said, ‘Tell me.’

He looked down at me again, as if he had forgotten who I was. With sad face, he asked: ‘Don’t you recall the doings at Wakefield?’ Then: ‘Ah, certes, you would be but a young child.’

Seven years old, and in the nunnery. I remembered how the news came to us at Leicester. My mother had prayed for Lancaster, but the Mother of Leicester, the Prioress, had. prayed for both Lancaster and York. ‘Tell me then, Master Skelton,’ I said. ‘Tell me the truth of Wakefield.’

‘It was to be the final triumph for the House of York,’ Skelton said slowly. ‘The Duke of York, King Edward’s father, his young son, Edmund of Rutland and the Earl of Salisbury, marched for Yorkshire in hopes of defeating the French Queen at last. My lord of York had already claimed the throne by right of blood. He had been hailed Protector of the Realm in Westminster. But he had reckoned without the Scots and the men of the North—all of them heathens and hot for the Frenchwoman. When he halted at his castle at Sandal, it was Christmas, and both sides declared a truce for the holy season. Alas! the Lancastrians enjoyed their feast and their disguisings right speedily, for on the last day of December they fell upon the castle, where York lay unprepared. He and many of his followers were slain in a matter of moments. They lay with the remnants of their gaiety around them, the holly and mistletoe boughs all spattered with their blood. Salisbury was taken and beheaded at once. Young Edmund of Rutland fled to Wakefield, where the battle raged, and there Clifford, the Lancastrian lord near his own age, cut him down as he cried for mercy. “Your father slew mine, and so shall I slay you and all your kin.”’

We stood quiet together, our feet damp with the lawn’s dew. From the hedge a bird sang mournfully.

‘He was seventeen,’ said John Skelton. ‘And they took his head, together with that of his father and Lord Salisbury, and exposed them to the people of York, speared on pikes at the Micklegate Bar, with paper crowns about their brows to mock their aspiration.’

‘Yet we are at peace,’ I said softly.

‘Through Edward, gallant Edward. He was spared that disgrace and death. Eighteen years old, and chosen by God. Earl of March he was then... you heard of the vision he had at Mortimer’s Cross? His Grace, rising on the battle morning, perceived not one sun in the sky, but three! Three suns! It was the sign, the Sun in Splendour!’ He clapped a hand over the royal emblem on his heart, the fiery sun. ‘I swear, I know, that God Himself gave him the victory. St Michael shielded him. Through Mortimer’s Cross, through Towton Field—where the worst snowstorm ever known soaked up men’s blood—Edward triumphed.’

‘And you?’

‘He had a task for me. The whole country was in uproar—churches were pillaged, children murdered—women were raped as though they were heathen women—men mad with looting-lust...’

‘We prayed,’ I told him. ‘We prayed day-long, with the nuns. My knees were raw from the chapel stones.’

‘Yes, the convent was safe for some. But not for those of the blood royal. It was January when the King sent for me at night, to escort his young brothers to Philip of Burgundy, where they would be best preserved. A risky adventure; I confess to being afraid. And, what was worse, the boys had been roused by the commotion and crept on to the gallery. They overheard our talk in the great Hall. I had hoped to bear them swiftly aboard ship without their knowing why, but Richard and George heard us speak of their father’s and brother’s deaths, and how their heads wept blood on Micklegate.’

I thought of my mother, slipping away in peaceful sleep; of my father, wounded and shriven, providing for me in death. To a Lancastrian household, Lancastrians, who had done these fearful things. But a Lancastrian household no more, since the King’s pardon arrived last year. I thought: Death is a part of life, and a part of me. Held by John Skelton’s story, it made me no less sad.

‘Which is the right course, the right way?’ I said. He did not hear me.

‘The young princes had scarcely time to receive their mother’s blessing. They call her the “Rose of Raby”, that proud, brave woman. I saw her fighting her grief as she flung together a few necessaries for their journey... warm clothes, a missal, a jewelled dagger... She put little Richard in my arms. He was stiff with shock, like one dead. Jesu! How he favoured his father in face; he still does. When she kissed him I turned my head away—she knew not if she would see him again. The rebels were everywhere. London was in madness. Even the ’prentices were armed with clubs. Mayor Lee donned mail; the city flew to hide behind him. They said that the Frenchwoman’s army was sweeping down like plague to murder us all, and that London was doomed. Many repented of their sins, that night.’

He was silent, thoughtful. ‘Where did you take ship?’ I asked.

‘At Billingsgate, on a Flemish merchantman. Days and nights we tossed on the North Sea. George enjoyed it. He harassed me with questions while I nursed Richard, whom grief had thrown into a sharp fever. He moaned for hours, his flesh on fire. He was a frail child at the best of times; through his infancy men marvelled daily that he lived. So off the tortured sea came we to Duke Philip. Young Richard lives yet. Praise God.’