A Princely Knave

by Philip Lindsay

  Strongly guarded was the North Gate. Before the steady flight of arrows, the prince’s men wavered when he led them to the attack. They drew back and began to scatter, but Ashley rallied them. Riding ahead of them as they ran, he turned and asked for brave men to follow him. Those who were cowards, he shouted, faint-hearted Cornishmen or men of Devon, get them to the women and the baggage-carts; but those who were lion-hearted, follow him, he cried. And they cheered and raced beside his horse, carrying a great tree that they had chopped down the night before.

  Into that arrow-rain of death, under the fall of stones and muck, they battered at the gates; they lighted fires against the wood, not having sufficient gunpowder with which to blow an opening. And at last, slowly, groaning as though they were human, the gates began to give, the lock and bolts and bars to break.

  Again … again … in the arms of many men, like a colossal centipede, the tree thumped on the wood until, screeching, the gates began to sag.

  To the prince, erect in his armour in the saddle, hours seemed to pass while that ram battered on the wood, such being his impatience and his courage. Men fell under the arrows, yet others, heroes, ran to take their places and to grip the tree. At least, there was no shortage of men, although few of them were soldiers.

  Above him shook the banner which showed the boy escaping from the tomb; and drawn by this, almost ceaselessly the archers aimed to kill him. But he was out of arrow-range and the shafts fell harmlessly, coming with little force to glance off his steel or to sink on to the grass. Yesterday he had left his standards in the camp, thinking it best not to hazard their capture, but on this cold morning he had decided that they had best be flown, an invitation to battle, because, he swore, he was prepared to die rather than to give way and leave Exeter unsecured in his rear.

  In full armour, Skelton slouched on his horse one side of him, with Ashley in helmet, gauntlets and plates on breast and back, on his other side. Heron had been left in command of the camp, although, stung by Ashley’s gibes, he had clamoured to go with them. He was the eldest and, in body, the slowest, and for those reasons the prince had insisted that he remain while Skelton joined him in battle. For Skelton was no coward and was nimble of limb and agile of mind, although, after too great refreshment of loving, his wits lately had grown dullish.

  At last, before the pounding, the sagging gates gave way. With, a screaming of the hinges, the two leaves rocked apart, and into the dust charged the cheering rebels.

  “Forward, banner!” cried the prince, and he waved his sword, kicking his horse with the prick-spurs. Beside him trotted Ashley and Skelton; the standard floated over his steel head, and his men-at-arms rode in his rear, as, for the second time, they charged into Exeter.

  During the night, eluding his lazy scouts, cannon must have been carried into the city; or perhaps they had been hidden or needed cleaning that they had not been used yesterday, although that seemed doubtful. Wherever the guns had come from, they were now in use, spraying iron and stone balls down the narrow streets to hurtle men in agony of broken bones and crushed flesh on to the cobbles. There was no way by which they could be captured, save by coming on them from the back, and in the muddle of streets it was no easy thing to find one’s direction once the main streets were lost.

  His army scattered, broken into groups running along different streets, away from the cannon and the deadly archers, he sought to rally the men, smacking backsides with the flat of his sword; but they would not face the guns; and he could not blame them. No longer a battle, but rather a series of sorties, the fight for Exeter went on, but now the prince could not blink from the truth. He was defeated. The cannon had defeated him. Ay, the cannon and his own impetuosity, his need for action lest the army rust and his enemies grow stronger while he waited. In these cobbled streets, he saw his brave dream die; and he sobbed with fury at thought of the morrow and the scorn that he would find in Katherine’s eyes.

  Fool, fool Perkin to think to be a gentleman, a prince, a king, a strutting princox in eagle’s feathers. Others, the duchess and the kings, had made a mome of him, flattering him with honours while sniggering behind his back, encouraging him as a gadfly to sting the usurper whom they hated. And he, fool, had half-believed the dream … By God, he did believe it yet; and raging, he spurred his destrer after the foe that dodged from under his sword, darting quickly into houses which slammed their doors on their heels. Nowhere could he find men ready to stand and be killed. They threw things at him and his comrades; they stood far off and unloosed their arrows or cannon-balls, themselves remaining safely out of reach. Few were those who had been killed, and his anger needed the homage of a hundred corpses. Then did he understand how soldiers after battle could loot and ravish, and burn down houses and torture captives. Their hungers, not fully slaked, needed further violence, love by violence, the satisfaction of seeing hatred and terror in the eyes of the helpless. Yea, the orgasm of such cruelties was the reward of war which the warrior needed as though he were Mars demanding human sacrifices, a brutal compensation for brutal deeds.

  Defeated he might be, but he would not run away.

  “Never!” he shouted when Ashley suggested that a truce be trumpeted. “Nay, sirrah, to ask for terms would be worse than capture, more dishonourable. I’ll not do it.”

  “This is a sorry day,” gasped Skelton. “My lord, let us withdraw. In these narrow streets we are trapped and, against cannon, courage is useless. For your men’s sake, if not for your own, sound the retreat.”.

  “Coward,” snarled the prince, “coward and traitor. This is Bosworth over again, the prince deserted, betrayed, in the midst of his enemies.”

  “What else is there to do?” sighed Ashley. “My lord, I have little love for this old carcase of mine. My death might as well be met today as tomorrow. But there are others whom it would be princely to consider. Not only the men but their wives. Their wives are waiting now, praying for their safety. Should these poor devils die because their prince is a lion? should their women be left widows and the prey of the conquerors?”

  “Ay,” whispered the prince, thinking of Katherine, “there are the women to remember ...”

  How could he crawl back to her without the crown he had sworn to place on her golden head? She would despise him utterly, for women worship success and take for husbands or lovers men of whom they might be proud and other women envious. In their vain glory, they did not want the defeated, their own surrender in love becoming then demeaning, no longer a conquest by beauty but the coupling of lily-hearted serfs, like animals. After this, he would be shamed and women would mock at him as a weakling and doubtless, by then, a cuckold …

  “Your grace,” said Ashley, “shall I command the trumpets?”

  “Yea,” gasped the prince, “yea. O, I am shamed forever, forever shamed …”

  Suddenly he burst into tears and his men looked from him that they might not watch his misery, their own hearts being as heavy as his, although they could not weep …

  In an open space within the city, the Earl of Devon waited with his knights about him. From the open windows, laughing, the women gazed to mock at the man who had thought to capture them with the other riches of Exeter. The prince’s helm was off and they saw, surprised, his young beauty, the golden hair and the troubled face with the one eye glazed and twinkling indifferently and the other eye darkened with misery.

  Stiffly he bowed as he approached the earl, and the earl bowed to him in courteous reply, each man seated in his saddle, the earl’s left arm crossed over his chest in a bloody bandage.

  “I crave, sir,” said the prince, trying to speak and to look like a prince even in submission, “I crave, sir, your permission for my men to withdraw in peace out of this city.”

  “Let them go,” said the earl, “they’ll not be harmed even by those whom they have harmed. You will not be molested, sir.”

  “Thank you,” said the prince, flushing because the man spoke s
o brusquely, giving him no title beyond “sir”, but speaking almost as though to an inferior. His fists clenched in the gauntlets and, too furious to speak, he glared about him at the armoured men watching in the square, and at the windows crowded with men and women gloating on him with hatred or contempt. In that silence, nobody spoke, but he could feel the scorn and loathing as though he were naked; and he wished that he could hide, could run away and hide where no one would find him and scoff at him, the fool who would have been a king, a dreamer stripped of his dreams.

  Without another word, he turned his horse, and his men opened silently behind him to let him pass; then slowly they followed him; and he heard laughter, women’s laughter shriller than the men’s, pursuing him; laughter’, he felt, that he would never forget. Through streets of mockery he paced, his head up, cheeks scarlet; and some there were, the widows, the fatherless, who cursed him and called on God to strike him dead, who had brought death and destruction into Exeter.

  “Peterkin!” they jeered. “Peterkin, Peterkin Warbeck!”

  Not one called to him as prince or even as Richard. But “Peterkin!” was the cry, “Peterkin Warbeck!” And to laughter and mockery, to the cry of “Peterkin!” he rode through the city, out through the broken gate, and into the open fields; and he wished that he was dead.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE IS NO ESCAPE

  HE MUST not despair, urged Heron, his own face white and seeming like dough. Others before them had lost, urged Skelton; yet in the end, they had won. He spoke of King Edward who had once been driven by the Earl of Warwick and his own brother of Clarence from his kingdom, only to return with Richard of Gloucester, his other and loyal brother, and a small following to win back all again.

  Scarcely did the prince listen to what was said, so heavy was his gloom. Let them chatter, trying to give themselves courage while depressing him, for nothing could redeem the shame of that day’s defeat All England would laugh at him. And beyond England, Scotland would jeer and France would shrug contemptuously. No one again would ever believe that he was the younger prince escaped from the Tower. He was plain Perkin Warbeck and a liar duped by his own lies. He had always been Perkin Warbeck, no matter how he had pretended greatness under a dead boy’s name. For the true Richard undoubtedly lay dead, murdered by Henry Tydder. Otherwise, Tydder would have shown the lad to the people and therewith stifled all conspiracies. Instead, he gave out the tale that King Richard had had the brothers murdered; but no one believed that obvious lie, Richard, the acclaimed king, having had no cause to kill his nephews, while Tydder had had every cause. If either of the princes had been living when Tydder invaded England, he would have been crowned king instead of this Welshman with no true claim of his own, not being of legitimate royal lineage. To strengthen his flimsy claim, he had had to marry Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth, and declare her legitimate; and if she were no bastard, her brothers also could not be bastards and the elder youth should have been crowned. For that reason had Tydder had to kill them. He had had no other choice: either the boy’s death or his surrender of the throne for which he had schemed for so many, many years. Through treachery and murder had the upstart seized the crown, wedding his rotten stem to the pure body of the princess; and through tyranny had he held it, killing all who attempted to oppose him. Now, after his victory at Exeter, the rogue would be more secure than ever in his grip on the country which without pity he impoverished.

  Yea, sighed the prince in his misery, he was not really the prince, not Prince Richard escaped out of the Tower. He was plain Perkin Warbeck. Peterkin. The other was a dream. Prince Richard, like his elder brother, Prince Edward, had been murdered by Tydder’s orders. He was no more a worthy contender than Lambert Simnel had been. Like himself, Simnel had had great men to puff him forward. Great women, too, if rumour did not lie, the queen’s own mother, widow of Edward, had supported him against her son-in-law and her sons’ murderer. That was why Tydder had seized the unhappy woman’s lands and had then locked her in a nunnery that she might be given no further opportunities of denouncing him.

  From such a scoundrel what could he hope? sighed the prince.

  A prince! He must not call himself a prince. He must remember that he was mere Perkin Warbeck again and that his parents were in truth his parents and not his foster-parents. All the while, he had known in his heart that his tale was a lie, although it had been brave and merry while it lasted. He was not Prince Richard; he was the son of Warbeck of Tournay; and the mystery of his birth and early years was no mystery as he had striven to believe and had, indeed, believed. His memories were confused because when very young his mother had taken him to Antwerp that he might learn Flemish, and from Antwerp, the wars had driven them back to Tournay. That was why he could recall no settled home during those days. There were early memories, too, of England when he had learned the tongue, living with John Strewe at Middelburgh; then had come his voyage to Portugal in the service of the Jew, Sir Edward Brampton; and in Portugal, his service in the retinue of valorous Sir Peter Vacz de Cogna, the one-eyed …

  True it was that such might have been Prince Edward’s wandering life had he been snatched out of the Tower. Their ages would have fitted more or less. The different masters, the foster-parents he could vaguely recall, the many lands he had seen, the different tongues he had learned, the different masters he had known … It could have fitted the prince as tightly as it fitted him as Warbeck. How was he to know the truth? Of their early years men can tell little beyond what others tell them. And many had told him that he was King Edward’s son and that he was his image in both face and body. Perhaps he was, for he was certainly fair of complexion and his womanly skin and yellow hair could not have been inherited from the darker Warbecks, while King Edward had been a golden man …

  Nay! he must put behind him that dangerous, that delicious dream, no longer having faith in his stars …

  He did not argue with Heron or Skelton. As though his will were broken, he did whatever they suggested, and Heron refused to consider fleeing to Burgundy. Fight on, fight on, insisted the merchant truculently: England still waited for its prince. They had only to entice to their standard one or two of the great men. Just one or two. The others would soon follow, glad to tear off the badges of the detested miser, Henry Tydder, who lurked in his unkingly way within his personal bodyguard. No other king of England had ever shown himself a coward before this man’s coming, perhaps because no other king had possessed so weak a claim to kingship.

  Dolefully towards Cullompton they rode, the unhappy prince with his three councillors and his dwindling army. As they rode or walked on, men slipped away or scurried off, dropping like old leaves from a dying tree. The prince made no attempt to chase them. Let them go. Had he been in their place, he, too, would have run from this doomed adventure.

  They were making towards Taunton. There, argued Heron, they would be able to recruit their forces and plan a new campaign.

  Idle talk. The men had had their bellyful of fighting. Losses at Exeter might not have been great, over four hundred or so dead, but those who lived had been dispirited by the defeat. With neither the wish to continue fighting nor the will to surrender, they drooped behind their prince, sullen with memories of old friends dead or wounded … Yet still they hoped. The king was so detested that surely others would be inspired to join them in their revolt? Let cowards run off. Had not King Harry the Fifth thrashed a vast army of the French with a handful of archers? What one man had done, others could do after him. And it would be done again, insisted Heron; but the prince did not trouble to argue that he was not fighting the French but Englishmen with equal skill at the long-bow.

  That night they shivered about their camp-fires. Winter had suddenly, spitefully beset them with cutting winds and a thin incessant rain. Now no merry chatter and loud boasting could be heard, no laughter, no singing of gay songs and ballads. Glumly, the men ate the leathery powdered beef and pressed together for warmth, hands
out to the flames, while the icy wind beat through their clammy garments. Towards the tent in which their leaders rested they turned puzzled, angry faces, hoping for some miracle, for some conjuration of these great men who held their lives in their hands, that would return them to their homes, conquerors, and at peace.

  Heron was the one who did the talking. Even Skelton, usually garrulous, sat dumb and shivered while he drank the sour ale, no wine remaining in their baggage. In silence that was more the silence of indifference than of despair. Ashley sat, staring into the fire, and now and then his thin lips curved into a bitter smile at Heron’s boasting. He had no hopes remaining, the prince knew. And he was the wisest, most clear-sighted of his council. If Ashley despaired, as he plainly did despair, the ranting of Heron was but empty thunder, menacing without the ability to strike. In the south-west of England they were trapped with the sea behind them, although if they hurried to one of the ports before Tydder had them closed, they might find a ship and be able to escape. To where? Wherever they went, memories of failure would sail with them to smudge the present with tears of shame and of regret. Better was it to die fighting, although the prince was young and did not like fighting; and he longed like a child for its mother to be in Katherine’s arms again.

  There could be no escape, for a man cannot escape from himself. Only he prayed that death should come swiftly and in the heat of battle. Thought of being tortured twisted him like the gripes in his belly. Always had he been a coward about pain, flinching from any little hurt; and to have his arms and legs dragged slowly on the rack until the bones left their sockets and hung by muscles and sinews only … Tydder was a cruel man. With Simnel he had been content to degrade him to the kitchens, but he would not do the same with another stronger claimant to his throne. This time doubtless he would strike hard to strike terror into others who might think to defy him. No, the prince knew that he could expect no mercy. Heron knew it. Skelton knew it. Ashley knew it. With boasting, Heron strove to keep the terror at bay. Skelton was crushed under it, becoming suddenly an old man with shaking hands and loose lips which he was continually licking. Only Ashley maintained his air of courage, perhaps because his faith in victory had never been strong.