We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (32 page)

Warwick Castle alone was a prize. I could scarcely believe it.

‘“And Sheriff Hutton, and Penrith,” said the King sternly. “So be it,” said my lord of Clarence, and a long sigh rushed round the chamber. There was then only the sound of parchment being rolled, and coughing and yawning, and a great black cloud, lifting.’

‘You are a poet, Sir Clerk,’ I said admiringly.

‘And a Parliamentary roll ordaining that no grant of lands made to Clarence ever be revoked,’ he added, reproving my frivolity.

We parted near Dunstable and he gave me his blessing, and I was glad of it, for London and all I loved were slipping further and further behind down Watling Street. The first night we lodged six leagues south of Northampton and I slept well, also the following night, outside Lincoln walls. But on the morning of the fourth day, with the towns getting fewer and the great flocks of sheep rolling across our path, I waxed doleful indeed. I wondered what the Princess Elizabeth was doing, and whether the King were pleased with his new fool. I thought on my mother and the last time we met. She had been wondrous merry, pert with some hidden humour like a young maid, and when I gave her the news of my impending departure, and into whose service, she clapped her hands, saying I was a fortunate man. She then made me admire the new shop front, which gleamed black and gilded, and the brave new sign clanking in the breeze, and all I could get from her was what a noble prince was my lord of Gloucester. ‘Serve him well,’ she said, and when I raised my brows, she did but repeat herself and went on stroking the new timbers, like a daft woman, lovelorn. I hate secrets.

Also she asked me when I was to be married. For, over that miserable winter of ’71, I had in my great folly, become betrothed to the maiden seen for the first time outside St Swithin’s Church. Maiden I say, but Mistress Grace was in fact a widow of two-and-twenty, and all aflame to marry again. Mourning had not suited her heart—she was a fickle, jealous, wayward creature and for a space she fascinated me. From the moment I accepted her invitation to dine at her parents’ house, things were out of my hands. Her father was a grocer and apothecary with a shop in Bucklersbury Lane, where he sold treacle of Genoa, and honey and sugar-loaves and copperas and cubebs and liquorice, as well as coarse goods in bulk. He had a house in St Laurence’s Lane, next to Blossom’s Inn with its sign of St Laurence the Deacon in a border of flowers. He was wealthy, but I was not without the wherewithal by any account, and both my mother and Grace’s family seemed delighted by the match. So we were troth-plight—bound as if by marriage, in God’s sight. I had had a strange feeling on hearing my baptismal name, used so rarely: Piers, the man, or Patch, the fool: which would you? One afternoon she well nigh tempted me to sin, in her parents’ parlour. She had black eyes. We were betrothed, and I knew not if I loved her. She had not wept when I left for the north. She had only looked at me as if she couldn’t wait for my return; or as if she couldn’t wait.

‘I will send for you,’ I had told her, and she had wrapped her arms about my neck, shuddering delicately.

‘Dear heart, I couldn’t brook those solitary parts,’ she had said. ‘Mayhap I will go to the Minories for a space,’ but I knew she would not. She had too much of a roving eye to cloister herself among the droning nuns. None the less, I am what I am, weak and cautious, and would not commit myself to instant matrimony, so I said: ‘I will come soon again to London,’ and gave her a tawny gown furred with squirrel, and a coral beads, which she wrapped round her wrist in the fashionable manner. I suppose it must have been in the back of my mind that she was my surety for a return to London, for if I asked my lord of Gloucester for leave to visit my
betrothed,
after all that had passed between him and me, and his lady, he could surely not refuse me. In any event, it was done; and as I rode north I still knew not if I loved her.

By four of the clock we were in right wild country, with our mounts flagging from the undulations of the Fosse Way. Treacherous ice patches covered the small bogs in our path. We forded streams, plunged through thickets where the only life was the frightened duck and grouse and wild boar which started and squealed. It was as the Croyland monk had said, wild and awesome; we passed the sprawling grey shape of many an abbey and priory. Then, suddenly, a great mysterious hand threw a cloak upon us. Utterly bewildered, our company came to a stop.

‘We’re lost,’ said John.

Ahead, I heard Sir James Tyrell in conversation with his esquires. Their voices and the chink of their horses’ gear sounded dull and far in the still, enveloping greyness.

‘What was that last holy dwelling?’

‘Kirklees, or Hampole, my lord. I’m not sure.’

‘We are off course,’ said Sir James.

He murmured something else. One of the esquires rode back to us, his face a pale splash in the swirling cloud.

‘We will seek shelter at the next abbey,’ he told us. ‘My lord says it’s madness to go on.’ He turned his horse, and vanished within an armsbreath. John clutched my sleeve, fear in his face.

‘It’s only fog,’ I said kindly. ‘Bear up.’

‘I thought I saw...’ He was muttering about demons, then asked with fresh terror if we were to spend the night at Kirklees, where the wicked nun bled Robin Hood to death, and Jesu preserve us all!

We approached neither Kirklees nor Hampole. I never knew the name of that holy house, but it was a grim, solitary place and the nun at the lodge gate loath to receive us.

‘We’ve enough to feed already,’ she said, then saw Sir James looming behind us on his great black horse, and became all a-flutter. ‘Enter, sirs.’

We dismounted, aching from damp and the ride, and tramped through cloisters into the parlour, where the Prioress, no more than five-and-twenty, received us in rich robes. She sat motionless, a small dog on her lap. Jewels sparkled on her white hands. The
Romaunt de la Rose
lay open on the table. At the farther end of the room a fine peregrine sat on its rod. I looked keenly at the lady and decided that this was a very worldly nun. John also stared, under his lashes. I wondered if he were thinking of Master Hood, and looking for blood-irons.

‘Sirs, please to be fed,’ she said in a high, douce tone. ‘There are two chambers you may use—we have parlour boarders here or I would house you better.’ She rang a bell and a maiden entered. She was about thirteen; no nun’s habit for her, nor jewelled rings. She wore a plain grey gown and limped.

‘Mistress Edyth will guide you to the guesthouse,’ said Madame. ‘But soft, sirs, it is long past Compline.’

We followed the shadowy Edyth along the cloister out into the fog and the cloister-garth and through to the long low building which served the corrodians and there we ate mutton in an uneasy silence. Edyth hovered; she was pale, with sad dull eyes. There was a heavy atmosphere about the place. I felt it, as I stood with John and Robert in the passage waiting while Edyth brought candles. It was so still, yet fraught with past dooms. Unconsciously I felt for my knife as a jay-bird screamed. A dog howled, a woman laughed. I lingered for a moment while the others went towards bed. I know not why. As I stood I heard a quick, light tread, and saw a flickering light bloom in the dark distance. A woman was approaching—not a nun—she wore a neat headdress with a short veil. She was as small as a faery woman, with a handspan waist. She was the Maiden, and just as in my dreams, only better.

She stopped and peeped up at me, and it was as of old with the flame leaping round our heads and the chill darkness. The last time I had seen her she was distraught and weeping, while the King was captive and heads rolling all over the realm. Now she was calm, and older. Like a still portrait she stood with one hand on the crucifix at her breast, the other raised so that the light she held flooded us both and flickered in the draught. She had filled my thoughts for a long, long time, and I had thought to see her no more. And all my wit and power were stilled under the force of my love, and I knew not what to say to her. So I spoke her name, saying it over and over, and then I took and kissed her hand, the one that lay on the Cross. When she greeted me it was as if she were the jester, and I the maiden.

‘Well, sir!’ she said smiling. ‘Is the King’s fool to become a monk? If so, he has strayed into the wrong cloister, for we have no habit to fit him here. Or is it plans for some new disguising?’

I heard my own voice boom back from the vaulted passage. ‘Sweetest of mistresses! Oh, sweet! How and what do you here, in God’s name?’

She set the candle on the ledge and spread her hands, just as she used to do.

‘I live here,’ she said simply. ‘This place is my husband in truth, for my dower feeds me, and clothes me...’

‘I never guessed you were to buy a corrody,’ I said, and she answered right swiftly: ‘It was bought
for
me, my friend, and thus I eat heartily and pray long—that is, when I can, for the jargoning birds in church and dorter drive one senseless with their noise.’

So she was unhappy. To gain time I said: ‘We were lost. We came here for succour. At first they were loath to open but Sir James...’

She cut into my speech and her lips curled scornfully.

‘Pay no heed to their tales,’ she said. ‘It costs less to feed wayfarers than to flaunt in twenty shillings of fur on her mantle, as does the Prioress!’

When she was young, and I her only friend at court, I would hold her hand; at Christmas I had kissed her. I again took her hand and held on to it, and she curled her fingers around mine. Truly I had forgotten how deep I loved her. A sighing wind blew down the corridor and the little veil fluttered on either side of her face. I thought of her nut-brown hair, hidden this night, and I, too, sighed like the wind. Now I could rue my hasty betrothal. In the sight of God, Grace and I were one, and here was I, enchanted. The Maiden and I stared at each other, and the scent of my sorrow must have released hers, for she cried:

‘Oh, Patch! this is a terrible place—there’s no discipline, no peace. One of the nuns threw herself into the well, a month past.’

‘Why, in heaven’s name?’

‘She was guilty of apostasy.’

‘In what way?’

The Maiden smiled, a wonderful tight smile. ‘She was in love.’

To change the subject I said: ‘We are for Middleham,’ and in the guttering candlelight I could have sworn her colour faded and came back.

‘We can’t talk here,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Come to the scriptorium.’

As we walked together, one of the shadows detached itself from a pillar and became the little Edyth. She took the Maiden’s gown by its edge and went along with her like a dog. It was then I knew her witless, and wondered even on that, for I am far from such, yet would fain have been my sweet mistress’s cur, fawning on her daily. The Maiden spoke her soft, saying: ‘Go along, dear child; wait in my room,’ then turned to me and murmured: ‘She is not as marvellously dull as she appears; she is my beadswoman in heart and thought—indispensable.’

Yet Edyth tarried, looking at my lady with all the love I would fain have shown, until the Maiden said: ‘Go! tend the jewel, she was coughing a half-hour back. I shall not be long.’ And Edyth became a shadow again, merging with the darkness.

‘A sick nun?’ I asked.

She smiled and laughed and looked sad, all at once.

‘As you wish. Aye, a young, sick nun.’

‘Who is Edyth?’

‘One such as I,’ said my lady. ‘One who rides the tide anchorless. She is gently born. A bastard. Now, what of the court?’

I drew my wits together and told her of London. Being cloistered she knew little of past events. She knew of Warwick, though.

‘I cannot believe that he is dead,’ she said slowly. ‘Never will I forget my first sight of him—he was like one descended from Olympus.’ Then she asked: ‘How does the Queen’s Grace, and all her many cousins?’

‘Thriving,’ said I. ‘Waxing fat.’

‘The Dowager Duchess of Bedford?’

‘Dead and chested.’ Remembering that the Maiden had served that lady intimately, I added, ‘God assoil her.’ I waited for her ‘Amen’ but her thoughts must have wandered for a space, for I did not hear it. She asked after Katherine and Elinor and Mary and Anne Haute and Elysande, and I was able to give her news of all these fair ones. She hounded me with questions.

‘And the Princesses, and the new, blessed heir to England?’ I told her of my sweet Elizabeth, raking through last autumn’s leaves for titbits to enchant her. I told of the day when Elizabeth escaped her nurse, and the Duke of Gloucester’s wrath. She became very still suddenly, with the stillness of a rose before its petals drop.

‘You say—Richard was angry with the dame,’ she said, as if it mattered.

‘Aye, white with fury and concern.’

‘He was rare in his wrath, as I remember.’

‘Ah, you would not know Gloucester now,’ I said. ‘When you were at court he was but a youth, shy, ill-fitting among the gaiety. Now he is a man, with battle scars and a will of his own. Constable and Admiral of England, and Lord of the North. He rules these parts—from Wensleydale.’ I pointed northward. ‘From that gloomy fortress of his, where I am bound tomorrow.’

I hoped she would commiserate with me for she knew how I loved London. But she said, right soft: ‘Wensleydale, with its sharp cleansing gales and haunted mists. There a man can come close to God and know himself at last,’ and it sounded like a poem she had by rote, a song of someone else’s making. ‘Tell me of all the royal princes,’ she said.

I knew not where to begin, but told of George of Clarence, recounting my part in the love-tale of Anne Neville. I spared no detail, for it was better than any ballad lately fashioned, being so packed with surprise and romance, and as I had been a protagonist in the strange events I recounted with gusto. And she was very quiet—the quietest audience I had had for many a geste-night.

When I paused for want of fresh embroidery she said: ‘Tell on—so George thwarted the match,’ and I said, with satisfaction, ‘Yea, and with such cunning one could almost admire him.’ Suddenly she cried: ‘Friend, will you bear a letter for me?’ She called for pen and paper, which the pale Edyth brought, with fresh candles. Thus she wrote, standing fine and slender like the carved scribe-stand against which she leaned, while I waited, drinking up her beauty. She rolled the paper and then she took from her pouch her seal which she held up, dark and heavy-gleaming, saying: ‘My seal—at least they left me that.’ She took the tallow to the flame and sealed the letter and addressed it: ‘In secret, to his Grace the Duke of Gloucester,’ and then as an afterthought, all his titles. She was about to give it to me when I said: ‘But I didn’t finish my story—do you not like it?’ and added the parts I had missed, about my devil and his flying away, and she crossed herself to think of such a horrid demon plaguing me. She murmured: ‘So they were wedded, eventually?’ Her eyes were big and lustrous and I longed to kiss her, but on seeing her seal realized how little I had known of her, and of her family. She had always vowed herself humble, at court, with her dead father a landless knight, but in truth she had as much right there as any of the upstarts brought in over the years by the Woodvilles. It was then I felt bound to tell her a little of my thoughts, and plunged in, clumsy-footed.