A Princely Knave

by Philip Lindsay

  “Glory of God,” he whispered, staring at Ashley’s white face, “what is that?”

  “As I feared, your grace,” sighed Ashley. “They have turned to trap us.”

  Yea, in front and rear now were they attacked, and none could tell from which street the next assault might come with fresh men in steel to hack his army into sections. Shrilly, the prince called to sound the retreat and sent men hurrying to find the trumpets. Too angry to feel afraid, he raised himself in the triangular stirrups and, vizor up, he roared:

  “Retreat! make to the nearest gate! away!”

  He dug the prick-spurs into his horse but the great beast had no space in which to charge. It ambled into a side-lane, sliding in blood, until Ashley caught the steel-covered reins and tugged it back.

  “Your grace,” he shouted, “that way will you be trapped. Make for the gates.”

  “Which way are the gates?”

  “The way we came, back the way we came.”

  Back the same way that they had come; back over the bloodied streets which he had thought they had captured. Once in retreat, even sane men begin to lose their wits, as the prince realized in his despair. The men fought amongst themselves in their hurry to escape the trap. In the mad scramble, the prince was pushed aside, his horse almost driven on to its knees; and all the while, in the frantic uproar, not an enemy was to be seen. Only from down side-streets and lanes and alleys did the bolts and arrows fly, while from the roofs thundered down stones and metal. From their safe distance, the enemy could stand and kill and the attackers were helpless now that they in their turn were attacked, being lost in unfamiliar streets, buzzing like flies boxed in a maze, and sobbing with terror at this abrupt reversal of fortune’s wheel. Until then they had been conquerors and unafraid; now, inexplicably, they had become the defeated. Few had any understanding of what had happened. All they knew was that they had heard fighting in their rear and then the trumpets sounding the retreat; that they heard others calling on them to run and saying that their prince lay dead, was captured, or that he had surrendered his sword.

  Ashley kept close to the prince lest in the hurly-burly he go astray. But the street ran straight back to the gates and he could not be lost. But between them and the gates waited the enemy, swords and axes ready for killing. Thicker and faster flew the shafts, a hail of death, and down from roof-tops hurtled missiles thrown by women, old men and boys, who spat on them and jeered to see them turn. On to the left flank, the enemy struck suddenly, bringing troops inexhaustibly, it seemed, on to the frightened men and isolating sections of the army. Men as hidden as he was hidden in steel now barred the prince’s escape; and he began to whimper, afraid. No longer Lord Lancelot, once he had turned his back on the foe, that coward and commoner, Perkin Warbeck, straddled his heart again and urged him to pray and grovel.

  “One charge, my lord,” panted Ashley, “and we’re through them.”

  With them were thirty or forty men-at-arms, well-mounted, and the prince sank back amongst their steel protection, loathing himself for his weakness while the sword shook in his hand. Around him closed the faceless men of metal in that narrow way; and they pointed their swords like lances when they charged, shouting for the White Rose, the White Rose, a Richard, as though they called on saints.

  The impact of steel on steel was deafening and jarred through the prince’s bones like a clout on the spine. He raised his sword and wondered fearfully whom to kill amongst so many, wondering which was enemy and which was friend. Then he saw what seemed to him a giant raise in both hands a long pole-axe with curved blade and a hammer-head at the back … He had no time in which to move or to cry out before Ashley leaned forward and lunged up, driving his sword-point under the man’s armpit where the chain snapped before that sudden and sharp blow. Up and out of the saddle, then sideways, went the giant; and the prince and Ashley charged into the gap his going made.

  Blindly the prince struck out and was near stunned by the blows that thudded on his helm. He could hear himself sobbing, moaning and sobbing and cursing, inside his helmet that was as hot as any oven, the sweat running down his cheeks and soaked into the quilting, near blinding him. If he were not killed by sword or axe, he felt that he would swoon under the stifling heat or would fall to be trampled m his steel, unable to get up again.

  Then, not truly believing it, he saw the gates ahead. It was as though he were rising out of choking seas into the light to see that gate to freedom with the river and the green fields beyond; and with more desperate fury did he use his sword, while his horse, seeming as mad as he, kicked and bit and butted. Before them, as before a crazy centaur, the. enemy edged aside, swinging from the whirl of his sword along the blade of which the blood ran greasily. Fear brought him courage, fear with the light of hope. So little now separated him from freedom. Only a few yards: but every inch of them had to be fought. His men-at-arms were about him, ringing him in, the Lord be praised; and wearily he lowered the sword and tried to breathe while he rested back on the saddle’s high cantel.

  Through a red mist he saw the violent scene and there seemed hot coals in his chest and his throat had become too dry to let him swallow. So exhausted was he that he feared lest he slip out of the saddle, and he swayed, solerets only half in the stirrups; until suddenly; unbelievably, he found himself in the open, a green world before him and silence pressing on his eardrums, with, at his back, the din of battle. As tired as its rider, his horse stumbled and almost fell; then, inspired by the hope of oats and water in the camp, slowly it began to lurch up the hill towards the rebel tents, its rider swaying as though he were drunk or asleep in the saddle, a bloody sword drooping in one hand and the other hand feebly gripping the arçon before him lest he fall.

  CHAPTER NINE

  END AND BEGINNING

  AROUND the camp-fires they sat that night, staring down at Exeter. Women were wailing their dead or praying beside the wounded or searching for loved ones amongst the corpses tossed outside the walls by the citizens that they might be buried by their friends before they rotted and brought pestilence. That night there was no singing, no boasting, as there had been the night before. Priests were busy, confessing the dying or taking money for masses.

  Some of his men had already stolen away, Heron told the prince; but he was too sick at heart for anger or indignation. When he was told, he shrugged; and in secret, he envied the wise fellows. For him, however, there could be no slinking off; and he shut his ears to the talk of Heron and Skelton explaining why the attack had failed and plotting how to win on the morrow. Exhausted, yet unable to sleep, he lay within his tent and watched the moonlight move along the grass, groaning when he recalled other moonlit nights and women made even more beautiful by Diana who smoothed their cheeks and brightened their eyes to a loveliness that seemed more than flesh, while turning their hearts to loving with the loosening of their bones. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago had that springtime been, when he was young and without cares, snapping his fingers in the future’s face. Now he had become old and unhappy, corrupted by intrigues and bloody-handed with the death of innocents; and his love was lost to him on Michael’s Mount. Groaning, he brushed the yellow hair back from his face, a lock in the cold wind tickling his cheek, and he felt as though his skin were somebody else’s skin, a stranger’s, a man he did not know and whom he did not like.

  Already, the excitements of the day were half-forgotten, remaining in his mind as a confusion of scenes without unity, visions of men’s angry faces and of armour and blood and dust, with the noise of shouting and of armour clanging. And there had been that dark-skinned girl seen in the window. Her face, mouth open in a yell, and the black hair like ink to her shoulders … Had he been with her in that chamber, no doubt gleefully would she have stabbed him to the heart, rejoicing in the cruel deed, like Judith sawing at Holoferenes’s neck or Jael with her sharpened nail to drive into the skull of her amorous enemy. No pity would she have shown, that witch-woman in
the window with Satanic passions glowing in her eyes. Yet without hatred, almost with love, did he remember her and he thought of the peace that might be vouchsafed in her arms while he kissed the angry humours from her mouth and soothed her into tenderness … He did not want any woman’s hate; it saddened him. Between men and women and between men and men there should be only love, as Jesus taught; but love was so rare a gift, so doubtfully offered, and so grudgingly accepted. He thought of all the thousands of lovers that there must be lying that night as he was lying, with only their dreams in their arms. Katherine … alone on Michael’s Mount amongst, her women, the waves clamouring at her window when the wind blew hard, waiting for tidings of him from the battlefield.

  Ill news ran like fire through dry bracken. Men were deserting his White Rose and they would tell of his defeat. Throughout Devon and Cornwall, overseas to France, to the Netherlands, to Burgundy and Spain and Austria, over to Ireland and up to Scotland, quickly would the news be speeded and told amidst laughter with mockery at an ape in prince’s clothing. King James, damned James, would jeer. He was a fleering disbelieving rogue with a crooked smile who had not liked him from the first, sniffing at his fine garments and French perfumes, although, for his own ends, professing love. Damn James. And Bothwell, too, Henry Tydder’s spy, although the beloved of James. No doubt did he have of Both well’s treachery, else why had he always acted as Tydder’s echo in Scotland? A traitor. Ay, in Scotland there would be rejoicing when they heard, hate Tydder though they might. When the Scottish army had swarmed over the border in his name, killing, wounding, looting, ravishing poor women, and he had protested at such cruelty that could only lose him friends, James had turned on him, shouting that he regretted having Wasted Huntley’s daughter and his own cousin on a man afraid of blood. And aboard the Cuckoo — well-named little ship, a sardonic jest of James’s to have chosen her for him — Katherine, thinking death close, had taunted him as Perkin Warbeck, as though she, too, regretted their marriage. At first James had acted hastily, being swift to win him almost as soon as he had landed at Perth, and had rushed him into the espousals before he had seriously considered how best he could use this new Duke of York against his enemy in England.

  James must be forced to recognize his greatness and true lineage; for I am the prince, swore this prince to the moonlight on the grass outside his tent. A moonlight prince who had a triple heart: Richard, Warbeck, Brampton? Those three names were balanced in his soul, one rising now; another rising later; and another, later still; at times all three becoming confused, muddling him. According to the dictates of the stars and the humours in his blood, he altered. A prince when in armour; a Jew when naked; and when he walked the streets in company, he became the young merchant, Warbeck. This night, he felt that he was the Jew, the outcast, the exile rejected by his people.

  Tomorrow, Exeter must be his. Else the brave adventure was at an end and lives had been spent uselessly. All depended on that one walled city by the languid Exe with its broken gate which the defenders contemptuously had not troubled to repair. Through the night, bonfires were kept lighted in front of the gap, armed men Shimmering about them so that there might be no sudden assault without warning to the garrison. Doubtless, they were preparing some trap for him inside the walls. He did not care what they might do. He did not want to die, but, he felt, it would be better to die than to limp to Kate, a failure, to be forever despised by her whom he loved. Therefore on the morning’s battle lay all his future. One last desperate throw of the dice, with death to rattle the box …

  Coldly came the morning with dew like mist soaking through the canvas wherever by chance he touched it; and shivering, chilled to the bone, the prince crawled from his pallet and, with the help of his page, Atwood, drew on the quilted fustian doublet, inches padded across the shoulders, lined with satin and perforated that his body might have air, which he had to wear beneath his armour. Under the arms, where the lames opened, were sewn gussets of mail, as also at the bend of the elbows. Then the thick worsted hose were tied with points to the doublet and the thick-soled shoes were slipped on to his feet.

  In the dawn, unhelmed, on the wet grass he knelt at mass with his army and he confessed to the priest whatever sins he could recollect; then, with Ashley, Skelton and Heron, he breakfasted in his tent. Glumly he drank the cup of ale and chewed the hard, crumbling powdered beef on a trencher of stale bread, then ate the bread. His throat being very dry, he could force down the food only, with draughts of ale of which he felt that he could never have sufficient.

  As though they had been in the forefront of yesterday’s battle, Heron and Skelton talked wisely together, arguing in which fashion they had miscalculated and what they might suggest for that day’s attack. The prince did not speak. Like Ashley, he remained shut in with silence, scarcely listening to what these two cowards said, and thinking of wounds and of death and of torture were he captured.

  This Tydder was a cruel, vindictive man. His spite had he wreaked shamefully on the poor body of King Richard after Bosworth, stripping it naked as a worm and tossing it into an unmarked grave as though it had been some outlaw’s corpse. Abroad, the prince had met many an exiled Englishman who told of the tyrant’s tricks with those he feared. Doubtless, in such talk there was much exaggeration; nevertheless, not once had he heard a tale of generosity or of kindly dealing about this upstart who had stolen the crown. Men cursed his name and the unjust taxation with which he drained the nation into poverty that he might-fatten his own private purse. Such a creature would not be likely to show mercy but would more likely be cunning in his cruelty, as when after capturing Lambert Simnel he had degraded him by making him a turnspit in the royal kitchens. Well did he know how to break men’s spirits and their hearts. A liar Simnel may have been when he had said that he was the escaped son of Clarence, yet many had believed his tale. But after such disparagement, who would have followed him had he attempted to rise again, a filthy scullion to lead men to victory? Would that be his own fate, too, were he captured? some similar degradation that would make him a stinking jest in men s mouths? By God, he swore, crumbling the hard beef between his fingers: by God, he would hang himself with his points rather than be thus shamed.

  Heron was saying: “Proof they have no timber and few stones. They must be desperate or they’d have blocked that gate.”

  “Perhaps it’s a trap,” ventured Skelton. “Perhaps their pioneers have dug a great hole and covered it with earth on canvas, so that when we charge we tumble down and break our legs?’

  “Pish,” sneered Heron, with a soft, luxurious belch. “All night there have been huge fires lighted. Fellow, have you no eyes? Our men have watched and they’d have seen any digging in that glare.”

  “But farther back … out of sight …”

  “Pish,” said Heron again. “Holes in roads are easily stuffed up. I tell you they have not materials enough with which to mend the gate. They’ve left us a clear break in their defences. That is where I would charge, my lord.”

  With weary eyes, lids drooping heavily, the prince looked at him and said nothing; then he turned to the silent Ashley.

  “Yea, your grace,” continued Heron earnestly. “Already you have adventured by that way and know what to expect there, the width of streets, the number of turnings, lanes, and such. Always best is it to tread a path already trodden rather than to seek new ways that might lead you into some maze.”

  “Besides,” said Skelton, “we have not the engines with which to break down other gates. The West Gate we know to be dangerous with that bridge on which we could be easily trapped; and already once have we failed before the North Gate. Like a broken tooth stands that East Gate, and men do say, I blow not why, that such a gap in women’s teeth betokeneth lechery, wherefore is ‘gat-toothed’ another way of saying that such-and-such a female has a likerous tail. There is much to be read in teeth if seen close to, for does not the mouth invite to kissing and the lips open of themselves when ther
e’s a willing heart inside? This is a natural study sadly neglected by philosophers but of most fruitful opportunities, methinks.”

  “Where do you say we should attack, Master Ashley?” asked the prince.

  “At the East Gate we have failed,” sighed Ashley. “Whether it is being left open to catch us in a trap, as Master Skelton has suggested, I cannot tell; but it would be foolish to essay there a second time when they are waiting for us. We should try the North Gate again.”

  “But we failed there already,” cried Heron, “while we almost won at the East. Had not some silly rumour frightened the men, I doubt not that the city would by now have been in our possession. We were there in its very heart; then as though the devil were amongst them, the frightened fellows ran.”

  “If by ‘frightened fellows’ you mean myself and our prince,” said Ashley, “I would suggest that you bite your tongue, Master Heron. And I’ll have none of this talk of ‘we’ this and of ‘we’ that when all the while you rested your prats on a cushion up here out of harm’s way while we were at work.”

  “I kept waiting for your call,” growled Heron. “Was it not so, Master Skelton? We stood ready and impatient for our prince’s summons; then we saw you all run like mice out of the town.”'

  “You can lead the van today,” smiled Ashley. “Attack by that accursed East Gate if you’ve the mind to die. Where my prince leads, I follow … And where do you intend to charge, your grace?”

  “We will attack the North Gate,” said the prince.

  Because he wished to rebuke the sluggard Heron and to show his confidence in Ashley’s judgment, he had said the North Gate, although he had small hopes of entering there. If truth be told, he had small hopes of entering anywhere. Yesterday had shown him the dangers of fighting within an enemy city. Had he the time, he would have sat back and besieged the place and starved the people into surrender after the customary fashion; but time was what he lacked. By one bold stroke he had, somehow, to prove to England that he was no feeble Lambert Simnel but the son of that great soldier, King Edward the Fourth. Exeter had to fall or he would die in attempting it, else the adventure was over before it had scarce begun. And he suspected the tempting invitation of that open East Gate. Ashley was right. It must be a trap.