We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (35 page)

Richard rose and came down the steps to embrace the Countess of Warwick. Sciatica made her hobble at every step, her face was drawn. He kissed her on each cheek and led her to the vacant seat beside her daughter. I had mused about that empty place all evening. Anne was weeping. All she could say was: ‘Ah, sweet mother!’

‘’Tis all thanks to your good lordship,’ said the Countess of Warwick wearily. Richard leaned to wipe up tears with a napkin, signalled to me to start a jape, while the servers came forward with food for the fragile old dame.

This then was his well-kept secret. I found out afterwards that King Edward had taken some persuading. None knew why he was so reluctant to release the Countess from Beaulieu Sanctuary, but Richard’s pleas at Nottingham had finally succeeded. And he had his reward in the one burning, loving look from his little wife. I would like a woman to look at me like that, if only once. But then, I am not Richard Plantagenet. I am of no importance, and alive.

‘It is four winters since we plighted our troth,’ wrote my lady. ‘I find you a false wretch, as false a knave as ever my eyes beheld, for you say you cannot come to London and I could not support the cold of the north, without that I had a gown furred with the red fox and a dozen pairs of warm shoes, and such an unfeeling creature as yourself would seem ill-disposed to furnish me therewith. I trow you are without a heart.’

Lord! how she did rail! But to good cause, I admit, for over the sweet, fleeting years at Middleham I had become a craftsman in procrastination. None could hiver-hover like I. Yet I looked forward to her letters, for she still spoke of the King and the weather of policy in and around the capital, furnishing me with precious news.

‘Since my lord Oxford found himself adrift on St Michael’s Mount, he showed good sense in throwing himself upon the King’s mercy. My lord Clarence is full proud and lusts for this and that supplementation, and maybe more than just added livelode. The lady Isabel’s boy, now Earl of Warwick, thrives and will be the same age as your Duchess Anne’s child, bearing the same name, that of his Grace. Katherine my sister is with child again and bound for Calais to succour her lord who received grievous wounds. His wool-ship was plundered by the heathen Scots three days out of Dover. I have a new brachet, bought me by an old friend, you do not know him, he is a gentleman. My lord Clarence left the King’s Parliament lately right joyous now that he has Clavering in Essex and the manor of Le Herber, that which Earl Warwick used to own. It seems that the King has one thought and that only for his brothers to be at peace together.’

At one juncture it had seemed that Gloucester might lose Middleham. Anxious days those, while Clarence agitated again for the redistribution of the Warwick estates. Lady Anne had wept in the arms of her gentlewomen.

‘Why must he have these cravings?’ she sobbed. ‘Can he not live in harmony?’

‘There, dear heart,’ said Lady Lovell uneasily.

‘My lord thinks as I do. Today he said, “Why can he not be content as I?”’

Thereon I had burst into the room with mad grimace and silly song, and dried their tears within five minutes. Yea, the Church may frown on craftsmen like myself, but I vow there is virtue in folly at times. Then, Dame Jane Collins brought in her precious charge, Edward of Middleham, with his playfellow, and their sport together put mine to shame. For when Edward bumped his head, little John it was that bawled.

I will speak now of Edward, for he is as clear in my mind as the red rose I wear in my cap today. He was, as I had forecast, the fairest babe I ever saw: light and delicate as a rainbow, with the gentle features of his mother, and Gloucester’s dark blue eyes. He wore a white velvet doublet and a tiny dagger, blunt as an old man’s wits, and he played the soldier, challenging little John and besting him, for all that he lacked a year of his age.

‘Item,’ wrote Grace. ‘I hear that by the means of the Duke of Gloucester my Lord Archbishop Neville has come home. It passes my understanding that your lord should so concern himself with one who has laboured so treacherously and should have other deserts. I saw the Archbishop leaving ship at St Catherine’s. His time in prison has made an old man of him—he could scarce mount the steps. As for you, right worshipful and well beloved, I am likewise waxed frail in your absence, and would wear your ring soon for naught lasts ever, neither beauty, nor money, nor kindness, and my humours change daily, as the moon wanes and waxes. Let no earthly creature see this bill.’

I was about to tear it into shreds accordingly, when her scratched postscript caught my eye. ‘Item, your mother is sick.’

Just that. If Grace had wanted to get me to London, she had chosen the right halter to lead me. The letter was a sennight old and the packman who brought it north must have been riding a snail. Not so the courier who arrived at Middleham an hour after I had finished reading my lady’s hard words.

His horse was dying. It staggered on its feet, keeled over and lay with blown belly. The rider, a young harnessed knight, strode clear of the kicking hooves and made for the castle steps. He came swiftly, clutching his dispatches hard against his side and doffing his helm with its dark blue mantling. He was not one of the Middleham knights, but was gently born with the right to bear arms of the bend sinister, like Gloucester’s John. I did not recognize the other charges on his tabard. Besides I was taken with his eyes. Cold eyes, the colour of ice, and a black ring round the pale candle, like the eyes in a mad horse. There was excitement in him—folk could smell it—they came hastily: the horse-leech and the slaughterman, the grooms and two of the guard. Then more sedately, a chantry priest and my friends Robert and John, fresh from the delightful toils of music. ‘What news?’

The young man’s eyes, when he smiled, were not cold at all.

‘History in the making!’ he said. ‘I have gained the north in four days from London. Five spent horses and one squire weeping by the road without York! As for the news, you will hear it from his Grace. Where’s my lord of Gloucester?’

The guard pointed across the drawbridge. In the long distance, two horsemen were approaching, tiny figures.

‘The Duke rode to Rievaulx this day. Is that he returning?’

The strange knight stepped forward a pace. He looked for a long moment into the far blue and green of the spring day. ‘Nay, that’s Lord Percy’s man,’ he said finally. ‘He bears the silver crescent on his shield.’ He stared longer. ‘And the Earl’s son, Sir Robert, rides with him. He’s smiling.’

No man had sight like that, I thought. I made up my mind that he was a braggart and began to chaff him delicately with riddles, while all the time the riders grew closer and closer and came up over the drawbridge and dismounted, hastily, with the same elated air as this keen-sighted gentleman at arms. And they were Robert Percy and his esquire, of the silver crescent and the smiling face.

‘We are for France, and war!’ they cried.

So it came that I did not ride London-ward alone. At first we were an hundred, then double that number, and by the time of reaching York walls, our band had burgeoned to five hundred northern men; armed knights, archers and swordsmen, on foot and mounted. They wore brigandines, spiked pauldrons at the shoulder, heavy greaves on the leg; they sported jacks and sallets, carried bright swords and bills and leaden mauls; and if the mail sat on some better than others, or there were weapons that had lain idle overlong, it was nevertheless a heartening sight. From Northallerton and Boroughbridge and Knaresborough and Pontefract they came, and at York the column swelled to a thousand and then five hundred more. I could not fight, but I could sing, and so we did, with lewd jests against King Spider, to be wound in his own web, and praises sung for Charles of Burgundy, awaiting at St Omer the flower of England’s invading host. Their fathers had taught them the Agincourt song, and now was the time for its airing. So they rode to war, these men of the north—hard and swift of ire and slow to laughter, and they raised their steel-framed eyes often to the standard that flew above the long, glittering file: the snarling Boar of Gloucester.

I contented myself with riding up and down the line with quip and sally, dodging many a blow from men who could not wait to strike at something. One of these looked at me with scorn and muttered of coxcombs; whereon I rode knee to knee with him and strangled him with a paradox as we came to York, heart-high. On Lendal Bridge, the Friars of St Augustine raised blessing hands—Gloucester bowed; they were his friends. We clattered down Micklegate and either side was hemmed with women whose lords and husbands moved out to mingle with our throng. Under ghost-hung Mickle Bar we rode, and an old man wavered from the walls: ‘Jesu preserve his Grace! God for England!’ for he had fought beside King Harry, and come back limbless. This then was the army of the North; men bred in the cold moors’ solitude, who knew little of the court and its silken coils. Their loves were those of Gloucester, and they were Gloucester’s men.

My lord of Northumberland smiled a wonderful sour smile and set his shining back, for it was plain how these northern men loved Gloucester, who took the time to listen to their grievances in all the blaze of his great affairs, and once these had been Percy’s people. To quote one small incident: there was that matter of the fishgarths. These traps, said the men of York, littered the Ouse and Humber to such a degree that poor folk could scarcely make a catch; but the Bishop of Durham and those like him needed this meat for their holy houses—an outrageous monopoly, vowed the northern magistrates. Such sacred souls are fat and powerful—it took a King’s brother to find the solution. The plaintiffs came to the Council of the North with their pleas, and went away satisfied. So thereafter was fish on the table of clergy and laity alike, and one day fish on the Duke of Gloucester’s board—perch and tench and demain bread and pipes of wine—gifts from the grateful aldermen of York. Oh, how that fish stuck in Lord Percy’s craw!

When we emerged from Galtres Forest a party of knights awaited us at Bootham Bar. At that time I rode near the man of keen sight. I could only distinguish a vague shape of colour drifting from the standard bearer’s pole, but the young knight said calmly: ‘The Company of Taylors and Drapers—a goodly sight.’ And again I would not give him credence until he murmured: ‘Or, a pavilion purpure lined ermine on a chief azure, a lion’s head cabooshed affronté or over all, two Robes of Estate ermine lined purpure. Is your name Thomas, by chance, Sir Fool?’

Throughout London they were arming. In Eastchepe the merchants were leaving their houses on richly caparisoned mounts. I went first to my mother’s place, and stood aside for the band of archers who strode down the street, singing grimly.

‘Godspeed, lads!’ I called.

One stopped, mischievous-faced. ‘Don’t you wish you were coming, Sir Fool?’ he cried. ‘Frenchwomen are fair, I’m told, and fairer when they struggle!’

‘Bring me a souvenir!’

‘A French purse?’

‘A French pox, more like!’ I cried, then stepped into the cook-shop, my heart sinking, for there was the sickness smell, and no customers. My mother lay abed, small in a mountain of pillows. I pushed between the curtains and embraced her. My sister had come from Kent and stood at the fireplace with her back to me, stoking the flames as if for a lying-in.

‘Open the window,’ my mother said. ‘I would hear the men riding by.’ This I did, and the sound of tramping feet rose clear from the cobbles, a never-ending clatter. ‘I shall soon be well,’ she said, and would not talk about her ailments, but gossiped with me as before, of the Royal household, London life, and trade, which had not been so good lately

‘Folk have not the wherewithal,’ she said. ‘And there has been too much costly strife in London—quarrels breed heavy fines and besides, the King, God cherish him, asks much of his people.’

‘How?’

‘The
benevolences,
he calls them. Even here I’ve heard grumblings. You cannot milk a dry cow.’

‘Why, I thought the King could pluck his jaybirds with such skill that they never cry out.’

‘No more. And this war is expensive. God send him victorious.’

‘Amen to that,’ said I.

She smiled weakly. ‘As for this French affair—it is his intent to cool their humours with a real battle.’

I felt a wish to see the King. She said, ‘You may find him changed,’ but would say no more, so I asked about his royal offspring.

‘The Prince of Wales is at Ludlow,’ she said. ‘With his noble governor,’ and pulled a little face, saying that some servants of Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, had been in the shop lately and brawled with Lord Hastings’s men. There had been bloody noses and a table broken. ‘Let us hope he is teaching the Prince Edward better manners.’

‘The Earl is schooling him in all ways of urbanity and nurture,’ said my sister from the fireplace, and I winked at her.

‘Let us hope they will not make a milksop of him,’ I said boldly, thinking of the Woodvilles’ creeping elegance.

‘Speaking of heirs,’ my mother said, ‘you must wed Mistress Grace.’ This was the moment I had wished to avoid. I acted right shiftily, causing my mother to plead and my sister to frown.

‘Do not deny me grandchildren,’ said my mother. I told her I had affairs to see to, and left her with a kiss, trying not to notice her sad face. My sister followed me down; she was weeping.

‘’Tis canker,’ she whispered. ‘She has a growth on her belly the size of an orange. The doctor would have cut her, but it goes too deep. I mislike your lady Grace, but it would please our mother to see you settled and the line continued.’

‘Then
you
have a son,’ I said, bitter with grief.

‘My son died,’ she said, going pale. ‘I have been to Canterbury, but I am still barren.’

So I went out into the street, and made my way, heavy hearted, to Grace’s house. I had forgotten how foul London was. The streets were littered with filth that once I had hardly noticed. Had anyone, times past, told me I would crave the moors of Wensleydale, I would have struck him for a traitor.

On the corner of Fish Street I jostled a real popinjay of a fellow who cursed me. My mother had said that folk were tightening their belts against the press of Edward’s benevolences, but this man was exceedingly well-endowed. He was no nobleman yet he wore violet satin and carried a gold-headed cane. His hat was a green velvet carrot, with silver tassels. He had a fair, rosy, maiden’s face, and his voice, even when raised in oaths, was like a warbling thrush. It was Clarence’s mermaid, his protégé who sang so sweet. A member of the Profession, so I spoke him soft.