We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (31 page)

This was no blossomy pilgrimage of mirth, to divert Lord Hastings at Ashby, or Sir John Howard, or Sir John Fastolfe. Nor were we bound to tell sacred gestes and holy lays for mitred abbots like those at Glastonbury and St Alban’s. Jolly times were those, riding forth between cowslip fields shouting with colour, and not only because the lords we pleasured were generous, but for another reason. We knew that, after our task was done, we the emissaries of the King’s gaiety would be returning to London. And London was life itself to me. All those I loved were there, save she whom I had lost. All the things I knew best were there—the taverns, the reek, the jostle, the sparkling court. The sweet Princess Elizabeth. The King, who had betrayed me.

King Edward had dismissed me from his service, I that loved him so well. From the best and most innocent of intentions, he had bidden my departure on a day still edged with winter. When the Comptroller sent word to me I thought at first it was only a bad jest.

‘You, sir, are to ride to Middleham, in the north parts,’ said the messenger, cringing a little at my aspect, which must have shown many things.

‘Alone?’ I could only fashion the one word.

‘You, sir, Masters Green and Hawkins—it is the royal wish,’ he said, and, as there was naught to add, departed.

The King had made a gift of me to Dickon of Gloucester. A marriage gift, for Richard was wedded at last, and in a fine hurry after the final Council meeting at Sheen. Anne Neville had come forth out of Sanctuary to be his bride. After four months of Council-chatter they were man and wife, and gone from London in haste, vanishing into the wilds of the north, which I knew for a fact to be haunted by evil demons, and cheerless indeed. John had made music at the consecration of their union, and he now rode a little behind me through the foggy morning, with the Chilterns rising gloomily to the west and the rime cracking underfoot like an ill-smitten tabor. We were seven, riding north. Ahead I could see the broad backs of Sir James Tyrell and his two esquires. Directly in front of me a young tonsured clerk sat a dejected mule. I could hear John touching his lute as he rode at my rear, and Robert, lagging behind, seemed to be half asleep. We were for the cold castle of Middleham and a master still an unknown quantity. Behind me lay the royal court and all its fond memories. It seemed my days of joy and play were over, and ill fortune surely mine: I had felt this since December lately gone.

It had been a doleful Christmas. Yet we had feasted enough and been rewarded for our revel-labours, and I had ruled over Misrule once more and had got my twenty shillings from the King. Anthony Woodville fashioned a most holy play which took all our wit to justify, and I saw the Princess Elizabeth every day. Yet, as I looked to my royal master for his pleasure, and saw him fumbling and sad under a dangerous golden smile, my joy was much confined. Though I rode my mule around the hall, right up to the cloth of estate and with ringing cries summoned the lords to gamble dice, which they did right heartily. Fifty joculatores crammed the Hall, wearing their tunics of blue and gold, and the guises of wildmen and angels to mask the sweating faces beneath. The pageant wagons churned through the rushes, and King Neptune sat, high on the foremost ship, dressed in green cloth of gold. We played Samson, too, pulling down a temple that almost grazed the roof. One of the master-cooks invented a Nativity for the royal table so glorious that it became his swansong, for after fashioning the last gold star set in a spun-sugar sky above the Holy Child, he felt a fainting in his leg and sat down, and soon died.

The Queen’s sisters danced lustily. They twirled and swooned in the bransle and saltarello, while their noble husbands, Essex, Bourchier, Kent, Lord Dunster, postured and bowed with wonderful elegance, their satin thighs stealing the torch glow from the ladies’ jewels. There was a covey of holy men: Bishops Morton, Russell, Rotherham, Lionel Woodville of Salisbury. They pledged his Grace in spiced malmsey and hypocras, and if they thought the dancing wild, they did not say so.

The Queen, great with child again, was gay. The pastry-cook had moulded the Virgin’s face in likeness to her Grace. This pleased her, likewise the collar of rubies and the sapphire girdle presented by the King’s herald on gift-night. Anthony Woodville was lordly and high-hearted with prowess in the lists and at the rhyming. Young Thomas Dorset and Richard Grey were thrustingly merry, looking about with eyes that asked who dared drink deeper, dance more gracefully—and the candle of those eyes burned hot, seeking the thrown gauntlet.

And my sovereign lord? Well, truly he feasted twice, once after the vomit—in the high Roman manner, and passing bad for the belly, I have always reckoned; but I loved him no less for it. He cut a fair caper, and had he not been King I would fain have recruited him for my troupe of actors, so well did he disguise his thunderous heart. The reason for this hidden trouble was still Richard of Gloucester, whom, after the service I had done him, I had thought to see no more at court. He danced but once, and that with the Countess of Desmond, and he kissed her cheek in a filial way when all were flown with wine and goodwill. He drank but one cup to toast the King, and he stood out like a ramping tooth—Death at the feast. Ever he toyed with those accursed rings and his eyes were changing—from soft determination to hard melancholy.

George Clarence evaded the King’s glance, and drank cup after cup with Lord Hastings who, like himself, shunned the Queen’s kin as much as diplomacy would allow. Clarence feigned gaiety over wrath, and at times looked like a naughty infant who stamps its feet for a plaything and dares a beating. His wife Isabel was there, waxing faint after a short dance, with a wonderful red colour in her thin cheeks. Clarence cherished her well, for the bright blood in that face was Neville blood. All this I saw, and because I would have had my King merry in soul and body at Yule I became furious. I therefore found satisfaction in persecuting Clarence’s poxy mermaid, who was with us again, angel-voiced and simpering. For Clarence it was who had caused my King’s well-disguised disquietude. He had suffered a change of humour.

I had not been wandering when I marked Gloucester’s expression as he came from St-Martin-le-Grand. I said he looked as one who sees the need to do battle, and I was in sympathy with him. As soon as I had overheard his oath: ‘To the Devil with the estates!’ I longed to see him settled, and King Edward too. Richard had spoken to me during the Twelve Days. Half-demented from my exertions, I had gone aloft to the gallery. Now this was not like the gallery at Greenwich, with its souvenirs of the Maiden; that was just a little stone recess where one could stand very close, and mayhap trip a measure for the sheer, silly childish joy of it. This was a broad passage with the moon coming through the openings between the corbels, and great chambers leading off on one side. Into one of these I skipped to quiet my pounding heart, and there, without candles, was Gloucester, his elbows on the window-ledge. I muttered apology, but he turned, friendly, from the night sky and I made a light for him. His face was all hollows and bones in the solitary flame. He knew me then. I would have assayed a jest and gone, but he said:

‘I didn’t acknowledge the service you did me in September,’ whereupon I replied: ‘To serve your Grace warrants pride on the servant’s part, naught else,’ thinking all the time how little he knew he was nearly
not
so served.

‘You will not find me ungrateful,’ he said, still short and brusque, I wondered what made him so: just the absence of Anne, or was it ever his way? So I dared ask him how the Lady Anne was, and he answered she was weary of Sanctuary. He sounded sad, then.

So he must have anticipated trouble, and he was not disappointed. The court hummed with George’s latest sleight-of-hand.

‘A chop-house!’ he had cried, feigning great wonder. ‘Certes, the doings at Tewkesbury must have addled the maiden! Fortunate indeed that you found her, good brother.’

In the King’s pleasure-chamber, John had twanged a false note in his excitement.

‘I made a loathsome din,’ he told me afterwards. ‘But so amazed was I by Clarence’s duplicity I forget all Master Bucheron’s teaching. One should keep the thumb fixed so, behind the neck of my lady Lute and—’

‘A plague on that,’ I said. ‘What did the King say?’

‘He looked very hard at Clarence, as if deciding this playacting unworthy of comment. Then he turned to my lord of Gloucester, saying, “Let us now arrange your marriage with Lady Anne, and name your first-born after me.” “With my whole heart, your Grace,” said Gloucester, and was bending to kiss the King’s hand, when Clarence gave a mighty shout. “Nay!” he cried. “He shall not have her! She is still my ward, and the Neville affairs are in my hands. Her sister is still my wife. He’ll not marry her, and there’s an end to it.”

‘The King rose and swept all his chessmen to the floor, and the blood came into his face. “By God’s Blessed Lady,” he said, “George, would you deny our brother the solace of marriage?” “Let him marry someone else,” said Clarence, right sullen. Wherefore my lord of Gloucester murmured that this was not his desire, and I went on playing as best I could with my ears not on the tune, and got some strange looks from Master Carlile.’

Yet now they were married, after months of wrangling, and because it had so affected me, what with my devil and my anxieties, and now with my own future in the balance, I lusted to know the details. So I halted my mount until John and I rode knee to knee and spoke him soft, smothering my foul humour.

‘They say it’s a cheerless place, Middleham,’ I murmured.

‘Who says?’ he asked scornfully. ‘My Lady Anne seemed well disposed to ride there with her lord.’

‘Tell me about the wedding.’

‘It was as any other,’ said he. ‘The bells rang, the incense burned, the Sacrament was taken, the vows plighted. They were married.’ I vowed he was an exceeding dull chronicler.

‘Yet it was a quiet ado,’ he mused. ‘With scant ceremony. Unlike the Princess Margaret’s union with Duke Charles le Téméraire.’

I scowled at him. He had been there too, in Burgundy, at the right place and time as usual. He chattered on.

‘Only the direct members of the blood royal—all the Queen’s kin and my lady’s sister, ridden with Clarence from Warwick Castle.’

‘So Clarence is at Warwick!’

‘How wan of countenance she was,’ he said tenderly, lost in his own drift.

‘Lady Isabel is sick,’ I reminded him.

‘Nay, the Lady Anne. Her Grace the Queen looked proud,’ he remarked, and with these few words drew a clear picture of Elizabeth, great with another royal child, all firm lips and high brow, condescending to bless the marriage of her brother-in-law with little Anne. Neville and Beauchamp Anne, before her noble father launched himself against the Woodvilles and the realm. Neville and Beauchamp still, but I could well imagine the disdainful looks from those whom the Earl once tried to overthrow.

I asked: ‘What took place at the Council meeting? Clarence was so adamant.’

John said: ‘Well, the brothers parted with affection, after the ceremony. Of the settlement I know little—there are more words than music in King’s Chamber of Council.’ He pointed ahead. ‘He can sate your curiosity, if he has a mind.’

The clerk rode bowed-headed. His plainsong blew back through the brightening morning. The cold air pricked pimples on his tonsured scalp. I urged forward beside him. He was midway through a soft
Magnificat,
so I waited until he got to
‘et in saecula saeculorum
’ and joined him in the long
‘Amen’.
He was bound for Dunstable Priory, with letters from his master, the Abbot of Croyland.

‘We ride to Yorkshire,’ I said, and he murmured, ‘Ah, a wild part, with great abbeys and rolling heathlands,’ and my heart became heavier for all this sounded somewhat gloomy. But there could be no casting back, now, and I was keen to hear his knowledge of the blood royal. I probed his mind, gently, like tickling a trout.

‘I have yet to visit Croyland.’ No sooner had the words left me than he was off, all a-shimmer with the Abbey’s history.

‘Holy St Guthlac founded it in the six hundred and ninety-ninth year of our Lord, when Croyland was bound by water,’ said he. ‘The house has withstood fire, and earthquake. Our carved rood screen is the finest. The footbridge in the market place spans three holy streams—my master is making a new chronicle which will compass all England and its times—my hands ache with the writing of it.’

He spoke of blessed streams, and his words ran on like one of them. He talked of St Benedict of Nursia, his patron. It seemed I would never draw him on to the subject of the Warwick estates. When he paused for air, I said with cautious haste: ‘Sir Clerk, I would gladly know what your master wrote of the King’s Council meetings at Sheen lately,’ and he replied:

‘Never have I heard so many arguments put forth on either side in respect of the Lady Anne. Nor have I heard before such eloquence as that possessed by my lord of Clarence. Even the lawyers were amazed by his ingenuity. Again and again he swore that the right of wardship was his and that Gloucester should have none of her.’

‘How spoke King Edward?’

‘When at first my lord of Gloucester offered to relinquish all... the King showed anger, as if he thought him over-generous.’

‘He said this?’

‘During a lapse in the sessions I heard him with raised voice. “Nay, sir,” he told the lord Richard. “You are my loyal and beloved brother and I will not see you cheated. But Clarence must be handled with velvet or he will wax more stubborn.” Gloucester answered: “All I want, Sire, is my wife—and Middleham.” “It is not enough, by God’s Blessed Lady!” said King Edward. He strode back into Council, and weeks longer they argued, Clarence full of orations, my lord of Gloucester standing quiet, and full only of thoughts.’

In my mind I could see him, pensive, unsmiling, rigid.

‘Finally he grew passionate,’ said the clerk. ‘He marched towards the Bench and faced them, turning this way and that so that his royal brothers should know his mind. “My lords and honest citizens,” he said. “I pray his Grace’s indulgence, but my wish is only for marriage with the Lady Anne, and for the Castle of Middleham. My brother of Clarence can have the remainder of the Warwick lands given me by the King after Barnet Field. So can he also have my Great Chamberlainship of England. And the earldoms of Warwick and Salisbury. All I desire is my wife—and Middleham.”