A Princely Knave

by Philip Lindsay

  “Not even one knight amongst them,” sighed the prince.

  “I keep on reminding you, sire, that they will soon be coming,” growled Heron. “You must have patience. What we have achieved within a few days I might say, were it not blasphemy, is miraculous and clear proof for all men that God is with our cause; and the cause that has God’s approval cannot fail, let the devil blow as he will. We have Tydder’s followers in a scamper of fear, knowing not what to do. Sir Piers Edgcumbe tried to stop men reaching us on the downs, just to the east of this fair city; and what happened? Tee hee, what think you happened?”

  “How am I to know?” grumbled the prince.

  “His men deserted him,” said Ashley, “and joined us. More mouths to feed; but at least, they were well armed.”

  “The devil damn you, Ashley, for a faint-heart!” cried Heron. “If St. Michael himself came from his Mount to fight with us you’d call him a coward because he flew on wings. With the whole country shouting for us, the troops that Tydder dares to send will fling down his banners and cry for Richard. You will see.”

  “No wonder you failed in business, Master Heron,” smiled Ashley, pushing aside the roll of names and lounging back on his stool to lean against the wall. “For a London merchant, even though bankrupt, to add dreams to his accounting seems to be scarcely honest. Dreams can prove no armour against spears.”

  “Then what would you have us do, eh? turn back?”

  “There can be no turning back for us,” smiled Ashley. “We can only go forward or die. And we must act quickly lest we outstay our welcome and turn good friends to enemies. These multitudinous mouths of which you are so proud must all be stuffed with bread and ale; and we have little money. On an empty belly, the bravest soldier will turn coward. Therefore it is essential for us, to attack, to attack, and to attack again, living like vultures on what we kill. And I do not like to kill my brothers.”

  “Brothers, forsooth! Is the usurper your brother? are these men your brothers who would murder us if given the chance? Then, by God, am I Cain.”

  “Peace,” said the prince, feeling he could no longer bear to listen to these almost endless and futile arguments which grew more venomous day by day amongst his council. “If we must fight,” he said, “fight we will. Besides, no soldier should leave garrisons in his rear.”

  “Spoken like your own father’s son!” cried Heron, swinging round to turn his broad back on Ashley. “Exeter is well garrisoned. There, Tydder keeps the men with whom he hopes to cut off our retreat. Should we continue towards London, they would sweep out while Tydder swept on us from above: like scissors. We must take Exeter.”

  “I have had many inquiries made about Exeter,” said Ashley. “They are expecting us there, ay, they are busy with their sulphur-pots and cannon-balls and sharpened pikes. Already there is in that city … I have a note of it … There are Sir William Courtenay, Sir Edmund Carew, Sir Thomas Trenchard, Sir Humphrey Fulford, Sir John Halliwell, Sir John Croker, Sir John Sapcotes, Walter Courtenay and Sir Piers Edgcumbe; while the Earl of Devon with his son, Lord William Courtenay, is hurrying there with reinforcements.”

  “All those great men,” sighed the prince, “and all of them hate me.

  “Tilly vally,” snorted Heron', yet even his red cheeks had whitened at the list of names, “they are hut men like ourselves, after all; Who’s to be frightened by the bogle of a name that has bought a knighthood from Tydder with gold or treachery? Not I, for one, by gogs. Had they the stomach of gentlemen they’d not skulk in a city but would sally out to seek us, as we, by God’s grace, shall go seeking them.”

  “Why should they be fools enough to leave their safe walls?” asked Ashley. “Only a madman throws away his shield in battle. They’ll stay snug where they are and pour boiling oils and fats on our costards outside. We have no great cannon, nothing that could shiver down thick walls. Do you expect to scratch your way in?”

  “My lord,” stuttered Heron, trembling with fury, “why do you keep this raven, a petty scrivener, at your side? He is worth a thousand men to the enemy. He sets cold in our bellies like old dough and dribbles stale over all our hopes. It seems to me that he has sold his heart to Tydder.”

  “You cannot call me traitor!” said Ashley, rising slowly to his feet; “but because I am honest and will bubble neither my prince nor myself with idle chimeras, you insult me, sirrah. There is greater danger in recklessness than in caution, as you never learned in business. For us to attack well-fortified and garrisoned Exeter must lead only to disaster.”

  “So you would have us march away and leave a hornet on our tail?”

  “I would do no such thing,” said Ashley. “I counsel patience. First, I would dismiss over half our followers —”

  “Mother of God,” squealed Heron, “the man is mad!”

  “I would keep with us only young men with good weapons. The others would be worse than useless in a fight. All they can do is to delay us during the march and encumber us in battle, beside the cost of feeding them. Give me a few hundred brave, resolute, well-armed men fierce for the cause, and I will be content. With a rabble behind you, you cannot win.”

  “Send back our friends!” gasped Heron. “That would sow doubt and fear, by my fai’, to send them back empty-handed to their homes, spreading the tale that we were cowardly and mean-fisted. Keep the men in good heart and half the battle’s won. My counsel, your grace, is that we strike at Exeter and strike quickly before the city has been provisioned and fully garrisoned,”

  “Too late,” whispered Ashley.

  Frowning, not knowing what to do, the prince looked at Heron standing erect, chin and belly truculently out-thrust, to Ashley drooping in the shadows; then he turned to Skelton who was nodding on a stool, half-asleep, having spent a jolly night somewhere

  “What say you, Master Skelton?” he asked.

  “I? What say I?” muttered Skelton, blinking around him and trying to remember what they had been talking of. “I say that this is a pretty city and that its women be as delectable as plums and I would we might rest here forever.”

  “To the devil with your whores,” shouted Heron. “Between you and Ashley, I shall go mad or bald, or both! Here is a dotard with a colt’s tooth who should be saying his prayers not selling himself into hell; and here is misery, the croaker whose fears make babies out of men. He fears to fight; and you are too lazy and ill-wenched to fight. I say — attack Exeter, and attack yarely; he says: Nay, let us run off, it is too strong for us. And you, Satan hang you, can only mumble about women, devil damn it. Are there not women, too, in Exeter?”

  “No doubt of it,” smirked Skelton. “There are men in Exeter, and where there are men there will also be women for they cannot breathe without us. So, say I, let us to Exeter for a change of mounts.”

  “There, my lord! Two of us are for taking Exeter while one is for loitering while your army eats away good-will.”

  “So be it,” said the prince wearily: “let us to Exeter.”

  He did not want to go to Exeter. He felt that what Ashley had said was right. They should dismiss all the old and the crippled and weak men, keeping with them only the strong well-armed; but, as Heron argued, an army must be fed and they were eating into the people’s good-will at Bodmin by doing nothing, while any men they dismissed might in their resentment spread tales of disaster wherever they went. They could not afford to dally here, nor could they afford to attack Exeter. Yet attack it they must. Henry Tydder otherwise had merely to sit back, retreating before them, luring them into a trap. Time was on his side. Enthusiasm can quickly bubble down when it’s not fed with victories, and an idle army soon breeds dissatisfactions. Outlaws, thieves, murderers, all had crawled out of sanctuary or the forests to mingle with the honest men beneath his banners, and unless before long they were thrown some loot, they would start working amongst their friends, robbing and killing peaceful folk.

  The excitement of ye
sterday had left him weary and sick, as after a debauch. His squabbling councillors, when all should have been united, encouraging one another, were like leashed dogs, awaiting their chance to snap and squabble. Except for Skelton. At first, he had seemed the most cunning of the three, but now his wits were gone at the prospect of lechery. And there were hundreds of other Skeltons in his army, baser Skeltons, more savage Skeltons; and would he be able to restrain their lusts once the gates of Exeter were down and the women would have no holes in which to hide? Would his men heed his trumpets when he tried to hold them from murder and rape and robbery?

  The thought made him shudder and his happiness of yesterday and that morning was no more. No longer Prince Richard, but frightened Perkin Warbeck, he sat, hands loose in his lap, while Heron shouted commands out of the window; Skelton crouched, grinning, half-drunk on his stool; and, with sad eyes, Ashley from the shadows watched him and did not speak.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CAGED IN IRON

  BUILT beside the river Exe, the city of Exeter appeared impregnable behind its walls. On those walls, guards were watching, the sunlight twinkling on their steel at every, move they made, when at near one o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday, September 17, the prince halted his tattered army of over six thousand men. Unlike many cities, the walls had been maintained in strong repair, his spies had reported, and at any hour the Earl of Devon was expected to arrive to attack the attackers in the rear. With scarcely a crease on its dull surface, the low-lying river ambled past, the wharves reaching into it on stilts were deserted, all ships and boats having sailed or been rowed away lest they be taken by the rebels. A city of the dead, it seemed, save for the guards watching from the walls and the smoke curling out of chimneys or holes in the roofs; and it was menacingly, unusually silent. To the prince’s herald with the trumpet who called for surrender, no answer was given. The strong voice sounded clear, but only its echo came in reply. The people of Exeter remained silent, waiting, not even troubling to answer with defiance. Here the gates were not going to open as the gates of Bodmin had opened. Although many men of Devon had tramped to fight under his standard, this city at least was resolute against him.

  Wearily, from his great horse the prince clambered down and strode the damp grass, tired yet impatient of delay. He looked at his vast army, then he stared at the city silent behind its walls. This was his testing-time. He knew it, and all England knew. If Exeter should fall to him, other cities would fall; with the capture of the earl and the lesser barons, all the great men of England might well unsheath their swords in his cause, prepared to take risks once they were assured that risks would be no longer dangerous. And he had prayed that, like Jericho, Exeter would tumble down at the mere blowing of trumpets by his heralds. But the trumpets blew and their brazen blaring echoed amongst the hills to tremble into silence. The gates stayed shut. There were six of these gates, and with his council he argued which should be the easiest to assault.

  “Avoid, above all, the West Gate,” advised Ashley. “I know this city, having lodged there once. Attack from the west would be useless. First, there’s that damned flat island to pass; and after that, the narrow stone bridge to cross. We would be open to slaughtering. They would smash us with stones from the wall and kill us at their leisure with shaft and bolt.”

  “But,” argued Heron, “that is what they will say. They’ll think, never would we be such zanies as to take that chance, and they’ll leave only old and useless men on guard. A sudden sally across the bridge, gunpowder at the gates, and we’ll be in, God willing, and our swords at work.”

  “Yea,” scoffed Ashley, “we’ll be in — a few of us — trapped, snared under the steep high street. That would be bloody work, for them, and death to us.”

  “He who fears to take a risk in war,” growled Heron, “will never win a battle.”

  “Yea, yea, listen to our Hector of a merchant talking. He knows all the dirty secrets of war; he is comrade of Friar Bungay who conjured fogs and mists for King Edward in his battles. He’ll tell you how to capture cities by puffing on the walls. Death, and death only, awaits at the West Gate.”

  “Because, mayhap, you found a whore there once,” spluttered Heron, “you set yourself up as an authority on Exeter. You may know all its dirty carnal secrets, yea, but we do not go lusting after brothels; we seek honour and victory for our prince.”

  “From the rear, no doubt?” smiled Ashley. “Ay, the better to urge on our soldiers, eh? Loudly the lion roars when the mouse is in its cage.”

  “Peace, friends; peace, I pray you,” cried the prince, leaning on the pommel of his sword. “Why must you make strife amongst us when we must stand united or we fall? You say, Master Ashley, that the West Gate would be difficult to assault. But there are other gates. What of the North?”

  “Ay,” said Ashley, “that, your grace, would be a wiser choice; Both North and East Gates are most open to capture. Perhaps the East would prove the better —”

  “Because you thought of it?” sneered Heron. “I say the West Gate and you deny it, recalling what some filthy harlot told you when you were there as a boy. Our prince points to the North Gate. Therefore must you say the East. It seems we must be guided by your memories of long ago; treading in the fewmits of old sins —”

  “I spoke of no woman. That is your stinking mind. I’m not like poor Skelton here who thinks by turning dotard in a woman’s lap to sneak back to his youth”

  ”Hey,” shrilled Skelton, plunging his prick-spurs into his horse’s flanks to make it rear, “I’ll not have wicked things said of me who am a pious fellow at bottom. Nor am I old, by gogs, being in my very prime of manhood; and here’s proof of it — that ladies love me and you’re jealous. O, I’ll not be angry with your green eyes, not me!” He cackled shrilly. “In my heart I am sixteen,” he piped, “and am galliard as a boy. Therefore am I a very Hercules as I will prove this day.”

  All three looked at him: the prince in wonderment that this lean-shanked, whey-faced elderly fellow with bowed shoulders and an imp’s eyes could be so lost to his soul’s future that, even amidst war and likely death, he could chew with pride the cud of sweaty nights. With sad eyes, pityingly, Ashley watched the man, feeling superior in virtue and contemptuous of this counterfeit youth. Almost with loathing did paunchy Heron watch him, chewing his thin lips and swelling out his cheeks.

  “Take no heed of Master Heron,” said Ashley at last in a weary voice. “He has his lusts, like you. Women do you need for the illusion of youth; but he … there is only envy and hatred in his heart. He would destroy while you at least would seek to create within your powers, and I … why, I would build a new England had I the chance, an England where men might work at peace without the fear of spies behind the arras, where men could sing at honest labour and not tremble before the king’s tax-gatherers stealing their earnings.”

  “Destroy? you say I would destroy?” gasped Heron, choking on the words. “I would destroy only my country’s enemies.”

  “ ’Tis true,” said Skelton, “that I am amorously inclined, being born beneath the planet Venus, but never would I take the nimblest maid were she to say me Nay. You are so virtuous, Master Heron, you were conceived of an apple, methinks, and know not yet how women walk. God's glory, I smell a lollard here, and always have I been a true son of the church. Why! if we have heretics amongst us our cause is clearly doomed, for God will hate us and will smile to see us thwacked.”

  “I am no heretic, by God!”

  “By God, you are a lollard, a snuffling prating lollard who would have no merry days in England.”

  “I ride for justice, not for gold or lechery.”

  “What think you we ride for, you snuffler!” howled Skelton.

  “Peace!” wailed the prince. “For the love of God, my friends, peace. I am weary of dissensions. You rob me of my heart and make me ill with despair.”

  Astonished, they gaped at him and saw how white we
re his cheeks and how his lip trembled, while tears were on his white lashes. Being on the ground and they honed, he seemed a boy amongst them.

  “I am merely your mammet; a name you use like an incantation; I am a nothing,” he cried. “And I am weary of it all, weary to the bone. Is not our cause a rightful one that you must hate one another, it seems, even more than you hate Henry Tydder? God's love, gentlemen, you know I was never forward with my claim, not liking strife. I was content as I was until you lit this fire in me. I want no thrones, only peace with those I love, yet here am I jostled by you three and by kings and queens and duchesses, and in your personal lusts I am forgotten or pushed by. What will be my life when I am king? Dissensions, plots and counter-plots and treacheries? Would to God I had never listened to your coaxing. Then might I have stayed happy with a wife and children and my neighbours' good opinion of my conduct. Instead, caged in this iron, taken from her I love, to this windy hill am I brought to look on Exeter. And now, when all our futures rest on the point of my sword, you must break out in quarrels between yourselves like drunkards over a reckoning. I am weary and would I could ride back to Michael's Mount.”

  They gaped at him, quarrelling forgotten in horror at this rebellion from one whom they had thought their manikin. Only Ashley, recalling that moonlit vision of the prince in agonized self-communion amongst the stones, was not greatly surprised. But to Heron and Skelton this outburst came as so unexpected a blow that they were unable to speak. Lost in their own ambitions, like men bedazzled with sin who are blind to all around them, they had never really considered the prince as a man able to think for himself. He was a symbol, the crown, a coat-card to be dealt in a game of their own, a boy obedient to their wishes. Now for the first time they saw him as a man like themselves, only younger and stronger, a creature of dreams and hopes and loves and fears who could suffer cold and heat, hunger and thirst, and often needed cherishing in his spiritual loneliness.