by Robert Irwin
Clarence says to Jacquetta, ‘You seem to know a great deal about these matters.’ His tone is admiring, though Anthony knows that the sentiment is not. Then there is an awkward silence, since Clarence has spoken the truth. Finally Jacquetta’s husband speaks, ‘There is not a real thing that is invisibility. How could there be? It is an absence of something. But it is perhaps a poet or a romancer’s way of writing about what is much more ordinary. Peasants are commonly invisible to the nobility, for we rarely notice them and these pages that stand behind us are also all but invisible.’
Rivers had wanted to move the conversation on to something more ordinary, but Clarence was set upon talking about poisons that operate at a distance, the evil eye, the conjuring up of storms and Satanic pacts. He swears that his little brother Richard’s withered arm was brought about by sorcery. Finally he interrupts himself, ‘Ah here he is at last, the alchemist!’
Ripley is flushed and perhaps drunk. Certainly he is drunk. He makes obeisance to the King and then turns to Anthony, ‘Well done! Well done, my beloved lord! It is as I foresaw. You have become the hero of a chivalric romance.’
Anthony nods wearily. He is bruised all over and ready to fall asleep at the table. He longs for whatever the alchemist intends to do to be done quickly.
Ripley goes over to the makeshift oven and sinks on his knees to pray. As Ripley rises unsteadily to his feet, Clarence calls over to him, ‘Are you going to make gold? Can you make gold? We would like to see it. We want a marvel.’
Ripley does not reply. Instead he claps his hands and a serving man enters carrying a goose which is plucked, but still very much alive. Ripley and the serving man struggle to lard the goose all over.
‘It is going to be roast goose after all,’ says Elizabeth, bitterly disappointed.
Next Ripley borrows a torch from one of the pages and sets the trench full of oil alight. Then he passes his hands over the goose and intones the words, ‘Hoc est corpus’, before placing the goose inside the ring of fire. The goose is frantic to escape, but cannot. Ripley, who is smiling broadly, explains that the pots are filled with water and added salt and herbs. This will give the goose flavour and prevent its meat from being burnt. Moreover, as they can see, the goose, in an attempt to stay cool, drinks from the water in some of the pots and this will clean out its insides. Also Ripley, reaching over the flames, keeps moistening the squawking goose’s head. The fascinated onlookers are silent and scarcely daring to breathe. At last, when the exhausted bird stumbles, Ripley intones the words ‘Consumatum est!’ and has the ring of fire doused. Next he carries the bird, which is still alive, over to the royal table and sets it before the King. Ripley urges Edward to pull off a wing, which he will find to be well roasted. Edward, appalled, draws back and refuses. So Ripley takes the lead in tearing a leg off the goose and chewing on it, and shouting over the horrible noise that the goose is making, he informs the other diners that they may all taste of the roasted goose while the bird is yet living. After a little hesitation, Clarence follows and takes the other leg. Tiptoft takes a cut of the goose’s breast. This is a meal he can relish. Thereafter, the still flapping bird is passed from diner to diner and a smiling Ripley paces behind the guests urging them each to take their cut. None of the women will touch the poor creature, but Anthony and his father, ignoring Jacquetta’s protests, use their knives to help themselves to some breast. Hastings, Pembroke and others of the peerage also participate in eating this rare and extraordinary dish. There is a lot of shouting and most of the diners are, like Ripley, very drunk.
Jacquetta whispers that everyone who has participated in this blasphemous horror is accursed. Once the goose is eaten, the dinner finishes with berries, baked quinces and more hippocras. While they are still drinking a procession of squires enter carrying gifts for the Bastard. These include a complete suit of armour to replace the one that was so badly hacked about this afternoon, two falcon peregrines and a panel painting of Jason stealing the Golden Fleece. The Bastard understands that this is the signal for him to take his leave from the table. But of course more jousting and more discussions of policy are planned for the coming weeks. After the Bastard has left, Edward rises from the table and he asks Clarence, Hastings, Tiptoft, Pembroke, Richard and Anthony to join him in a more private chamber and Ripley is also ordered to join this inner ring.
Edward says that he wants their counsel regarding certain threats to the Kingdom. Clarence wants to know why Ripley should be privy to these matters, but Edward ignores this. There are disturbing reports from the north. A certain gentleman calling himself Robin of Redesdale, though that will not be his real name, has raised a small force of gentry and peasants and is marching south with the declared aim of freeing the King from his evil counsellors. ‘He means you!’ says Edward looking round at his lords. There is also talk of a rebel force under a Robin of Holdernesse, though this may be the same man. Then there are reports that unknown persons have been using money to suborn the garrison at Calais. Also there has been a recent attempt to release Henry of Lancaster from the Tower. Sir Thomas Malory was one of the ringleaders in this plot. Edward is also under great pressure from the Earl of Warwick and the rest of the Neville faction to come to terms with Louis and abandon the Burgundian alliance that Edward favours.
A prolonged discussion follows in which Tiptoft and Pembroke take the lead as they set out detailed proposals for mustering men to march north and punish the rebels. There is no crisis. Still Edward remains anxious. He turns to Ripley, ‘There are so many rumours and rumours of rumours and reports of plots which may themselves be plots and many of these things may come to nothing, but some surely will. Tell me, you who are learned in all the arcane arts, is there a magic art of foretelling the future?’
‘If there is I would not know of it,’ Ripley replies, for I am not a magician, but a natural scientist. Still, I have read of a certain procedure, known to the learned doctors of Harran, though it has never been tried in England and it will be slow and difficult.’
‘How slow?’
‘Once I have all that is necessary for this operation, it is said to take forty days. But after that, you may learn what you like about what is to come.’
‘You shall have whatever you need,’ says Edward. ‘Tell me now about all that is necessary and I will have the procurement instantly set in hand.’
Ripley is silent for a few moments as he struggles to remember what his requirements are. Then, ‘I will need a good solid puncheon barrel, then seventy-two gallons of sesame oil…’
‘Sesame oil! Seventy-two gallons! I have never seen or heard of sesame oil,’ Edward protests.
But Tiptoft, who has tasted sesame oil when he was in Palestine, assures the King that the Italians will provide the oil for a price, even though it is a remarkably large quantity.
‘I have to allow for some evaporation,’ says Ripley. ‘Also I shall need a man and he must have red hair.’
Edward again protests, ‘You cannot… you may not sacrifice one of my subjects to demons. Such a ritual would be damnable!’
Ripley is calm and replies, ‘I am not going to sacrifice the man. I need him alive. Though there are dangers in the procedure, I hope that the man will not die. Only he will be tightly confined and he will never walk again. Also I will need modest quantities of fruit and nuts to feed him and about a pound of borax.’
Edward, mystified, shrugs, before instructing Tiptoft to seek out a redhead and arrest him and keep him in confinement until Ripley is ready to do whatever it is that he is going to do. Now Rivers breaks in and swiftly offers his and Anthony’s assistance in finding a redhead. Tiptoft looks puzzled but grateful. Edward says that their business is now concluded and rises to leave. Clarence seeks to detain him, for he wishes to get Edward’s consent for his proposed marriage to Isabel Neville. But Edward says that this is not the time and he walks out.
A friendly fight with bated swords is arranged for the following week, but on June 17th news comes that Philip t
he Good, the Bastard’s father, has died and the Bastard has to hurry back to Burgundy. With the death of the Duke the future of an Anglo-Burgundian alliance is in doubt.
Chapter Eleven: Manhunt
The hunt for a redhead begins with an inspection of London’s prisons. Tiptoft swiftly discovers a redheaded youth in Newgate Gaol and he is pleased that the mission has been so easy, but Rivers looks at Anthony before declaring that this youth will not do. Tiptoft looks puzzled and they move on to Ludgate Gaol. Here there are two redheads. But again the Woodvilles are adamant that the two men are the wrong kind of redheads. There is no hurry, for many months will pass before Ripley will have received a sufficient quantity of sesame oil. Rivers asks Tiptoft to leave the matter with him and Anthony. Tiptoft, more puzzled than ever, shrugs and agrees, for he has weightier matters to attend to. Anthony is about to leave the gaol, when a turnkey comes running up with a message. It is from Sir Thomas Malory who begs Anthony to come visit him in his cell.
He finds Malory’s cell to be large and well appointed, for Lancastrian sympathisers have paid for him to be provided with food, wine, candles and firewood. Malory even has a servant who lodges in an adjoining cell. When Anthony enters, Malory rises with difficulty from the table where he has been writing and they formally embrace. Malory does not look well. Then he points to the papers on the table behind him and says that Le Morte d’Arthur is far advanced. He congratulates Anthony on his recent combat at Smithfield and tells him that he must agree to be the patron of this work. That would be most fitting, since there is in England no lord more renowned for chivalry and knightly prowess than Lord Scales. He asks Anthony to sit and listen as he reads from the pages that he had just been writing. Anthony asks to hear how the story of the hind, the bratchet and the sorrowing lady was concluded, but Malory says that he has not finished writing that part yet. Instead he reads from an account of how Sir Tristram, Sir Palomides and Sir Dinadan were taken and put in prison. It ends with the following sentences:
‘And, as the French book says, there came forty knights to Sir Darras that were of his own kin, and they would have slain Sir Tristram and his two fellows, but Sir Darras would not suffer that, but kept them in prison, and meat and drink they had. So Sir Tristram endured there great pain, for sickness had undertaken him, and that is the greatest pain a prisoner may have. For all the while a prisoner may have his health of body he may endure under the mercy of God and in the hope of good deliverance; but when sickness touches a prisoner’s body, then may a prisoner say that he is bereft of all wealth, and then he has cause to wail and to weep. Right so did Sir Tristram when sickness had undertaken him, for then he took such sorrow that he had almost slain himself.’
‘But I am far from thoughts of suicide,’ says Malory. ‘For as you know, my writing is my deliverance and it takes me far beyond the confines of Ludgate Gaol. Besides I am almost done with Sir Tristram and though he was a great knight, I shall write of one who was greater, who was Sir Lancelot and I shall fashion him and his feats of arms on you and your deeds.’
Anthony is used to featuring in Ripley’s fictions, though he does not like them. Perhaps Malory’s inventions will be better. Yet the work that Malory is planning is so vast and complex that he does not believe that it will ever be completed, for Malory does not look long for this world. Still he puts a purse of money on the table as he leaves.
After an inspection of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons, the hunt moves out to the streets of London and armed with the King’s warrant, the Woodvilles and their retainers gallop through the streets questing for and briefly detaining redheaded men. Packmen, barrow boys, sumpter horses and drovers’ flocks scatter before the mounted questers. The Woodville horsemen are followed by grooms and running men. After a few days the redheads of London come to realise that they are the intended quarry and some of them try to make a break for it, dodging into passageways that are too narrow for horses, or begging for refuge in the houses of strangers.
The hunt is exhilarating and it takes the Woodville retinue to parts of the city that Anthony has never seen before. They gallop through the squalor of the hugger-mugger tenements of Aldersgate and past the cook-shops of Thames Street. They circle the imposing mass of the Steelyard of the Easterlings and the cyclopean fortress that is Baynards Castle. They ride past the timber-yards on the edge of the Thames and the gallows tree just beyond the St Catharine’s Dock which is reserved for pirates. The great steeple of St Paul’s rises like a star to guide them when they are lost. They pause to rest and drink at Pountney’s Inn. They cross the river to break in upon the brothels and bear gardens of Southwark. The gatekeepers at Aldgate, Moorgate, Aldersgate, Newgate, Ludgate and Blackfriars have been told to detain all redheads so that they may be inspected and questioned. The noble huntsmen even ride out to the smog of Wapping where they are greeted by sullen glares and much spitting.
Usually there is mist on the Thames in the mornings and then the watermen seem to float on white smoke. But it is finer to ride out in the spring evenings when the streets are lit with the glow of the setting sun and the sky is often a dark red that the river below reflects and some guess that this presages the imminent shedding of blood. Black and ragged clouds drift over the mad skyline of gables, turrets, belfries and chimneys. The spires of a hundred churches point to heaven like the fingers of so many hands imploring God. The smoke from thousands of chimneys rises as a dark and heavy incense. It seems to Anthony that London is an inhabited ruin, for half-timbered houses tilt and lean out into the streets, their roofs sag and doors hang loose from their frames. Trees force their way up through abandoned courtyards. Heir to the ravaged cities of Babylon and Camelot, London’s magic is fading, though its last enchantments still linger in certain ancient buildings
Soon it will be summer and Anthony is still young and he is rich and triumphant. When he looks back on the hunt on Vauxhall marshes where the gerfalcon was discovered some years back, he recollects how insignificant he felt and how eager he was to gain the King’s favour. Now all is changed. Moreover Anthony enjoys riding beside his father, for since the Battle of Palm Sunday he has spent too little time with him.
Word of the hunt reaches the court and soon the Woodvilles are joined by other lords who are eager for this new kind of exercise, among them the Lords Hastings, Pembroke, Stafford and Audley, as well as Sir John Paston. It is quite the fashion and a few ladies, riding sidesaddle, also accompany them. (Tiptoft, who does not join the hunt, is confirmed in his opinion that baldness is an estimable thing.) The custom is to meet beside the ruin of the Savoy Palace. This was the residence of John of Gaunt and almost a century earlier the insurgent peasants used gunpowder to blow up its great hall before setting fire to the rest. There remains a great flight of stone steps going nowhere and bushes grow out of what remains of an ornamental parapet. A line of battered and defaced heraldic beasts carved in stone – the lion of England, the griffin of Edward II, the falcon of Plantagenet, the bull of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the lion of Mortimer, and the yale of Beaufort – marks what was once the perimeter of the grounds. Stirrup-cups are brought to the riders outside this ruin, which is now the abode only of owls. London was great when John of Gaunt and his affinity feasted there, but we shall not see those days return. Then horns are blown and the hunters move off.
Stories proliferate in the city. Some said that redheads were being arrested and questioned because a number of Jews had recently smuggled themselves into England. Others said that the notorious lustfulness of redheads was the problem and the colour of their hair was a presage of the fires of the Last Judgement. But no, it was more probable that red hair was being collected to stuff a mattress for the Queen’s pleasure. Then it was reported that Judas had escaped from Hell and was walking the streets of London and this was whom was being searched for. Some, much closer to the truth, believed that this hunt was at the request of the King’s alchemist, for he needed the blood of a redheaded man to turn copper into gold. But most called the hun
t ‘the folly of Earl Rivers’. Shops and inns began to turn redheads away, for though people were sorry for them, there was no point in taking risks. There was word of a Red-Headed League formed by the unfortunate creatures for their self-defence, but others, more timid either call at the Woodville townhouse to offer themselves for inspection, or they leave the city until this strange hue-and-cry should be over.
Then some redheaded Londoners take to coming out in the streets only by night and because of this the Woodvilles institute hunts with torches and lanterns. Then shadows are seen to dance in the uncertain light of hunters’ torches. Anthony thinks that the windows of those houses on Cheapside whose interiors are lit up with a dull yellow light resemble the eyes of goblins and he says as much to William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, who is riding beside him. The Earl’s response is surprising, ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Did I ever tell you that I was once on a goblin hunt? It was in the marchlands of Wales. The whole area was infested with these horrid creatures and they were attacking children. So their numbers had to be brought down. Their glowing eyes used to give them away. Also the hounds found it easy to follow their peculiar smell. The little creatures resembled humans so much, particularly Welshmen, that it seemed cruel to kill them, but we did and we cut off their ears for the tally. Looking back on it, perhaps we should not have held so many meets, for I believe that there are very few goblins left in England or Wales. They may even be extinct.’
Twice in these enchanted weeks the hunting party ride past a walled garden the door of which hangs open on both occasions and as Anthony rides by, he can see a garden of vines and hanging birdcages where women dance in the moonlight and he can hear the music of the lute. He thinks that it would have been pleasant to dismount and rest and dream there, but his father is a man obsessed, for he fears that his son cannot be safe until they capture the redheaded man who attempted the murderous assault last year. Nevertheless the hunters have no success and slowly the London Hunt begins to break up as its members are called away on other business.