“Your grace,” he said, trotting up to ride beside the youth, “I would we had tidings of Tydder’s movements. We might ride into a trap.”
Smiling, the prince turned to him. “Faint-hearted — you, my master!” he asked merrily. “I did not expect that of you, sir. Our scouts ride ahead to give warning of any ambush, but they’re not needed. Every man, woman and child in Cornwall and Devon is our friend and spy. Any move that Tydder makes will reach me instantly. And every hour, look, new men are joining us!”
“Few gentlemen,” said Ashley.
“They’ll come. Have I not heard you often say how the gentlemen held back when Simnel landed, keeping their swords greased in their sheaths until they found which way the battle moved? They risk too much to act hastily. Once the king’s been thrashed, all their castles will open at our call or, like Jericho, they’ll tumble down before us. Look, see! there are more friends coming …”
More friends, ay, more bellies to fill when there was little with which to fill them; and they must not plunder. The dangers of that had been shown in the North Country when the murderous Scots had thought more of robbery and rape than of winning the people to them, antagonizing those who might have been their friends. The people of England must find that their prince was honourable and came to deliver and not harry them; yet, thought Ashley, seeing the many ruffians in their ranks, it would be no easy task to keep some of these dogs from theft once they had entered a prosperous city. Almost naked were many of the wretches, having nothing save their fists and stones and sticks with which to fight: what could such poor men do against steel warriors?
“One victory,” said Heron when they camped that night to eat and rest on the damp grass, “and all. England will rise for us. I have certain proof of it.”
“One defeat,” said Ashley, “and all England will chase us and hang us. This country’s apostasies are the jest of Europe, treachery being second nature to the English who always hate their kings. One day we kill one king; and the next we put up another, and then we kill him, too …”
“We did not set up Tydder,” growled Heron. “Only a few scoundrels fearing King Richard’s justice and hoping for easy fruit under a minority plotted against him. Then came damned Tydder and his mother to buy the loyalties of others … It will be different now. Once London’s opened its gates …”
Impatiently, Ashley shrugged away, weary of such talk based on hope alone. London would not open its gates. Whatever the people’s loyalties, however fierce their hatred against the usurper — and nowhere was that hatred stronger than at the Guildhall — the merchants would see that the city gates remained stoutly barred had the Angel Gabriel come knocking with the threat of plunder. Love of right and justice would never stir them should they feel their money-bags to be in danger. Alas, the world had become Satan’s bauble and men and women bowed again before the Golden Calf.
Through the camp in the moonlight he strolled, amongst the ragged yet cheerful men about their fires on which were cooking whatever victuals they had managed to garner. Almost to the skyline, that large and mainly useless army straggled, the people of England with empty fists marching against tyranny. The adventure was doomed, Ashley was certain; and pity and despair moved him close to tears at thought of the killing that would come when the royal troops charged with steel against flesh and bone. They would not need to charge. Behind their wooden pavises could the archers stand and quietly shoot the people down. It would be like a hunt, with men, not animals, for quarry. Unless trained and mounted gentlemen joined their ranks with their retainers, they could not hope to win; and, as yet, no great man had been honest enough to proclaim his loyalty. They played their usual waiting game in which they could not lose.
Under a tree sat the prince alone, away from the army. Surprised, Ashley stood and watched him, not thinking that he would have found him here; and he saw how the young man’s head was bowed on his arms that rested across his knees. In that posture of supplication or of misery sat the man who called himself Prince Richard Plantagenet; and to here dimly came the laughter and singing of the men about the camp-fires. From a far-away world it seemed to echo, making deeper the silence in this small space of yellowish stone and bent-down bushes and twisted trees amongst which sat the golden youth with his cloak of red cloth of gold about him and the moonlight crinkling his hair.
Of what was he thinking? Dreams of conquest? of a Tydder upstart in a cage? of trumpets sounding to battle? of sanded streets with people cheering and tossing down white rose-petals on the conqueror returning to his birthright? Or — who could tell? — perhaps he was recalling his humble childhood, his simple parents and ambitionless friends, before, for their own purposes and in hatred of Tydder' great folk had lifted him giddingly, giving him a king’s coz for bride, and with flattery had bred in him bold and dangerous dreams? Would the truth of his birth ever be known? and if it were known, would it be believed, men seeking always some dream of their own and fanatically clinging to it, no matter how baseless it might be shown to be? This was not so much a man who sat there like a young Job but a mammet made by others for their selfish ends; and would they care if he died, or was racked or torn with hot pincers, so long as he frightened Tydder off the throne? They would not drink one cup of wine the less, they’d pay for no masses to wing him into heaven. They would shrug and turn to find other mammets they might use in their conspiracies. And the Lady Katherine? That haughty woman with cold eyes who walked though as blind to those who bowed or curtsied before her, passionless, she appeared, discontented with all save her own sulky beauty, the soul seeming to fret within its prison of flesh and showing only through her sullen eyes. Cold, too, was her voice, for all the warmth of its Scottish intonation. He could not conceive love purring in that voice; he could not imagine any man taking her cheerfully into his arms. In that embrace, a man would freeze, chilled to the very bone, as though she were Diana and he a temerarious mortal who had dared surprise her in her human shape.
This youth could not have been a coward to have dared such a woman who would have daunted most. She seemed a mate for heroes; and this Prince Richard, or this Perkin Warbeck or this Brampton, was no hero, or, Ashley decided, himself was no judge of men. Yet heroes of the bedchamber were not by any means always valorous in battle; softened by Venus’s clippings, often they shivered before the rage of her lover, Mars. And there was much of a lady’s plaything in this young man with his well-combed yellow locks and his jaunty manner, but little in him, it seeded, of the soldier.
Suddenly, the prince stirred, raising both arms towards the stars, and Ashley heard him groan. His cheeks shone with tears and his lower lip quivered like a child’s before a thrashing as they moved in prayer; and in the eyes — or rather, in the one bright eye — there showed what sent Ashley back, hurriedly making the sign of the cross, terror that was horrible to see. Men should never reveal such terror. It debased them, turned them into children lost in the dark, lonely, tormented and without hope amidst enemies.
Praying that he had not been seen, Ashley turned and, on tiptoe, hurried back to the noisy camp, his scalp tingling as though he had blundered on the devil and his heart heavy with the certainty of disaster soon to come, leaving his leader alone amid chimeras of his own conjuring. Like sacrilege, he felt, would it have been to have disturbed him in that unmanly moment, for each mail must wear a mask, must hide himself from others, as though his flesh were as insensitive as steel and his face helmeted so that it could show only the lying windows of the eyes concealing rather than revealing the frightened soul within. Under such a leader, already defeated in his own heart, there could be no hope of success.
From the first had Ashley feared that; now was he certain of it. Yet never for a moment did he consider turning back and seeking a ship to ferry him to safety; nor did he thrill at the thought of becoming one of England’s martyrs. Only he felt as a man might feel towards his child heedlessly running into danger: he must run with him if he
could not stop him. At least, he would share his death and the gloomy satisfaction of knowing himself to have been a fool; the victim of his own make-believe with the dream of a crown that could not now be seized from the usurper’s head any more than one could pluck a star out of the sky.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SANDS RUN ON
AS THOUGH he were their crowned king, the citizens of Bodmin greeted the prince when he rode through the gates at the head of his almost unarmoured army. The long up-and-down street had been newly sanded, sands like grains of gold in the mud and dusting the cobbles, and from the open windows tapestries and painted cloths shook down, shimmering in the wind as though the embroidered or limned figures on them were alive and moved. And in the windows sat the citizens with their wives and daughters, their sons with their apprentices and the poor folk packing the street, pressed against the walls, shouting and tossing up their caps or hoods to welcome their comrades marching against tyranny. On the tiled slanting roofs, clinging to the occasional chimneypots, boys sat, bellowing; and women in the windows tossed down flowers — white roses whenever possible — on the heads of those below. Merry was that day in Bodmin when the Cornishmen came, grinning, dancing, waving cheerily, and the prince on his dappled horse smiled and bowed, seeming a king indeed. He had his father’s golden hair, the older folk said, and also his broad shoulders and sweet smile and the same gay cock of the chin; only it saddened the women to note the glazed look in the left eye while the other glittered with laughter and the promise of wantoning.
Behind the prince, also on horseback, rode his advisers and his squire — the fat, red-faced Heron in a furred blue gown; the careworn, bright-eyed Ashley showing no answering enthusiasm beyond a grim smile; Skelton, hood back on his shoulders to display his wrinkling face turning sharply this side, that side, quickly in fear lest he pass a pretty woman and not see her; and the page, Thomas Astwood, chest truculently out and his lips turned into a smile of indulgent triumph. Behind them, the mounted men-at-arms were a mere fifty or so; and after them trooped the foot-soldiers, many of them shoeless and most of them staring greedily at wealth which they had never imagined possible on this dreary earth. On and on, they tramped; it seemed that there would be no end to them: ragged men with their ragged women, tired and dirty, but in their eyes excitement shone with hope of booty and freedom. All Cornwall, it seemed, must have risen to follow its prince; and had they possessed arms and been disciplined, they might well have conquered England, thought Ashley with a sigh. Their hearts were bold enough, but fists against steel could only hurt themselves.
Before his noisy welcome, fears temporarily lifted from the prince’s heart. Here surely was a presage of success? He grinned, a boy again, and seemed to drink the acclamations that turned him drunk with pride and happiness. His love for Katherine had not blunted his desire for other women. Rather had it sharpened those desires, making all women lovelier because they were reflections of her loveliness. Yea, like a god, he loved them all, from plump matron to slim girl. Always when with women had he been happy, as though his spirit fed upon their beauty and their flattering frailty, making him feel immortal and unconquerable. How could a man die when he was loved so greatly? Ay, they loved him. Scarce a woman that day in Bodmin, he felt assured, who would not gladly have laid herself down for her prince. Was he not to them some kind of god, this golden youth from over the seas, shining into the darkness of their lonely hearts, who had come to free them from the accursed Welsh usurper?
Dark-haired, dark-skinned, there was promise of passion in these women’s looks. Never yet had he kissed a Cornish lass. French, Flemish, Spanish, Irish, Scots and English had he embraced during his travels; but these Celtic wenches were new and fascinating to him; and almost he wished his heart were not with Katherine that he might make sport that night. But he dared not do it. Inevitably, she would hear of his doings. Besides, he must be careful to antagonize no possible friends, and he could scarcely hope to find a pretty girl who had no father, husband, lover or brother. Nevertheless, they were tempting, these bonny lasses …
The shouting rang in his ears, echoing like the sea within a shell, when at the Guildhall he alighted and was greeted by mayor and aldermen in their furred robes. He smiled at them but heard scarcely a word they said, being still a little deafened after the people’s greeting, and dazzled by the memory of so many happy women; and he was grateful when opportunity came for him to sit and stretch his tired legs … And, fool, he had cursed the fate that had sent him on this wonderful adventure! Fool! he had thought only of the dangers ahead, forgetting the satisfactions of kingship. Even though it were his fate to die shortly on the battlefield or under the headsman’s axe, he would have few regrets, saving the regret of failure. Had not the tale of his greatness brought a king’s sibling into his bed and opened before him power and pleasures beyond counting? Ah, if only he could make himself king without the need to fight for the crown! He sighed, then smiled, while the mayor and aldermen of Bodmin talked and bowed to him, and rare foods and wine were carried and offered him by sewers on their bended knees; but he scarcely listened to what was being said. Beside the living pictures in his imagination, these men were shadows distracting him from the delights conjured behind his eyes.
Dazed, drunk-more on dreams than on wine, he went to bed that night and for hours he could not sleep, so rapid was the beating of his heart, so delightful the fever in his veins. Now was he able to understand why kings clung with such fervour to their toppling thrones; and why, when driven from them, they plotted and killed to win them back. After the wonder of being Prince Richard, never could he be content to become plain Perkin War-beck again. Rather death in battle or on the block than a drab existence with few worn coins to rattle in his pouch. And why should he think of failure? These Cornishmen were assured that he must succeed. Else why should they have swung open the gates of Bodmin when Tydder’s vengeance might fall heavily should he be defeated? No, these men would not have ridden or trudged so far in his army, nor would ladies have woven his silken banners, had they believed he must lose.
By the kerchief of Veronica he would not lose! Too long had he listened to the craven beat of his own heart, unable to believe that he was no longer the adventurer, Perkin Warbeck. Doubts were now forever behind him. He would show the Lady Katherine how little she understood or valued him that she should think to have him turn coward, running from his cause when that cause was also his people’s. And she was not the only woman in Britain, by God! In this town alone, there was a lifetime’s loving to content any man; and there were many other such towns and cities in the land, great nunneries for his sole enjoying; for what woman could ever resist a king? A king! ah, bliss would it be to be a king! Not a miserly king like this Tydder skulking within his guard and scheming like a Lombard about the ways of making money, but rather a king such as Edward of York — his father, ay! he must not forget: his father — had been, the father of his people often in more than the symbolic sense. And here was proof that he was Edward’s son, this lechery tingling also in him, for King Edward had been a very amorous man.
Still like a king was he treated in the morning, and he was delighted to find how easily he slipped into the part, allowing the attendants to wash and shave and dress him, and follow him wherever he went. Such reverence enchanted him. Only now and then, without warning, would strike at him the realization that all this luxury and worship was his for but a brief time and must be paid for in the battlefield. Then he winced and shook in the wind of death, his checks ashen, feeling he was a sacrifice fattened by a nation’s wishes for an unchristian death; and with horror, he looked at his expensive garments, as though they were grave-clouts and he an anatomy such as one saw painted on certain church walls: a skeleton grimacing in human gear while holding up an hour-glass. Quickly, ever faster, were flowing those sands; and although he was young and lusty and ready for many, many more years in this world, he was nevertheless, he feared, marked for an early grave.
/>
Wine! yarely, wine! wine alone could dispel that nightmare and burn life back into his veins. Then, refreshed, heartened, could he grin or whistle, contemptuous of the future while the present held such joy.
Every few minutes, men were entering Bodmin with the white rose in their caps or on their sleeves, proudly Heron told him, as though he alone were responsible for each recruit.
“The magnates?” asked the prince. “Have none of them come to me?”
“Not yet,” said Heron, frowning. “They bide their time.”
“Without them we must fail.” Merriment suddenly left him, and becoming once more Perkin Warbeck, the prince trembled in his fur-lined jerkin, drawing the collar up under his chin. “We have men enough, too many,” he said, “for few have arms, and fewer horses.”
“The magnates will follow,” cried Heron impatiently. “Here I have the names of gentlemen who, if not truly noble, have come with their swords. Master Secretary, you have the list there …”
In his dry official voice, Ashley intoned the names: “Perkin John Nankivell of St. Mawgan … Walter Tripcony of St. Columb … Humphrey Calwodeley of Helland … Otis Philip of Polwhele … Walter Grigg … Nicholas Polkinghorne of St. Gwinnear … Thomas Gosworthdogga of St. Crowan … John Trehanneck of St. Teath … John Tregennow of St. Columb … These are all from Cornwall, largely from the middle of the country; and we have here men also out of Devon with their tenants: John Giles of Samford Spiney … Robert Sturridge of Ashburton … Thomas Hart of Barnstaple … And, sire, there are others.”
A Princely Knave Page 6